Mideast Media Sampler 03/14/2013

Posted on 03/14/2013 by Soccerdad

The Ranting of Levine

Last week the New York Times published an essay by a philosophy professor, James Levine On Questioning the Jewish State. I won’t quote from the essay, but here are some of the responses.

Elder of Ziyon argues:

In fact, if you follow his bizarre logic, while “of course Jews have a right to self-determination,” in no practical way can that right be exercised. What kind of a right is it when it is hamstrung by definition?

Levine’s logical fallacy is that one’s right to self-determination is illegitimate if it happens to compete with anyone else’s similar right. This is something he simply made up. A people’s right to self-determination is independent of others’ rights. Unless there is a new continent that is discovered, by definition everyone’s rights to self-determination is going to interfere with others’.

…

Levine is essentially engaging in a sophisticated form of anti-semitism, where by his definition only the Jewish people’s rights must be subsumed to the rights of others; the others are not limited by any means that he sees fit to mention.

In addition to analyzing Levine’s argument, FresnoZionism asks a series of questions attacking Levine’s premise:

Why did you not write an article about whether Saudi Arabia has a right to exist as a Kingdom, or indeed whether any of the kingdoms, dictatorships, Islamic ‘republics’ or other undemocratic entities have a ‘right to exist’ as such?

Why did you not argue that the Kingdom of Jordan should not exist as such, not only because is it an undemocratic monarchy, but because a minority of Bedouins there rule over a majority of other Arabs? This is especially relevant, because Transjordan was created from the territory called ‘Palestine’, precisely to create an Arab state that would be a counterpart to the Jewish National Home that Britain was supposed to nurse into existence in Western Palestine.

Why do you find the relatively mild discrimination against Arab residents of Israel — especially in the context of the security situation — important when so many other Middle Eastern states with ethnic or religious minorities completely disenfranchise, even viciously oppress them (e.g., the Kurds or the Palestinians in Lebanon)?

Avi Bell writes in Pseudo-intellectual bigotry:

Ultimately, Levine’s claims boil down to the naked assertion that Jews alone among the peoples of the world should be denied self-determination, and that is because the general rules of self-determination should be selectively rewritten and reinterpreted to the detriment of the Jewish people only.

Similarly Hillel Neuer writes (h/t HonestReporting)

Levine takes it as a given that the Palestinian Arabs have a natural claim to the same right of self-determination that he is so quick to deny to Israel and Jewish people.

Doc’s Talk quotes Barry Rubin (whose observation sounds like it came straight out the Haggadah):

For 1000 years there has only been one religion that has been marked for wiping out.

For 200 years there had only been one people that has been marked for wiping out.

For 60 years there has only been one country that has been marked for wiping out.

Coincidence?

Why is Levine’s article important?

In 1996, Charles Krauthammer wrote in At Last Zion:

A century ago, Europe was the center of Jewish life. More than 80 percent of world Jewry lived there. The Second World War destroyed European Jewry and dispersed the survivors to the New World (mainly the United States) and to Israel. Today, 80 percent of world Jewry lives either in the United States or in Israel. Today we have a bipolar Jewish universe with two centers of gravity of approximately equal size. It is a transitional stage, however. One star is gradually dimming, the other brightening.

Soon an inevitably the cosmology of the Jewish people will have been transformed again, turned into a single-star system with a dwindling Diaspora orbiting around. It will be a return to the ancient norm: The Jewish people will be centered—not just spiritually but physically—in their ancient homeland.

Recently Meryl Yourish noted examples of this dynamic and observed:

The exodus is gathering strength. Jews are leaving countries where they are being persecuted–again.

In short an argument against the legitimacy of Israel, is an argument against Judaism.

A new Film looks at NY Times and Holocaust.(h/t Robert Avrech) The synopsis reads:

A student documentary about the paper’s shallow coverage of the genocide — just six front-page stories throughout the war — will premiere at one of America’s most prestigious festivals

Seventy years ago a catastrophe was occurring to the Jews of Europe and the New York Times ignored it. Now Jews worldwide are facing numerous crises and the New York Times is giving voice to the cheerleaders of their enemies. It would be generous to say that the Times has learned nothing in that time, but that would assume that the paper and its publishers are acting out of ignorance, not malice. As more and more arguments like Levine’s find a home in the Times, the ignorance defense seems less credible.

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Your Thursday sniefs

Posted on 03/14/2013 by Meryl Yourish

Yeah, I’m thinking the motive was far less noble: Hugo Chavez begged not to die as he supposedly suffered a heart attack. His last words? “Please don’t let me die.” The general passes along the bullshit that he only wanted to live to serve his country. Right. He served $2 billion right into his own pockets. And yet, he is still dead. El Presidente is just not as powerful as he thought he was.

British Arab P.O.S. anti-Semite gets his comeuppance: This guy is a real piece of work, a Jew-hater and an Islamist. But he finally got suspended by the House of Lords for his anti-Semitic remarks about why he went to jail for a fatal car crash that he caused by texting while driving. No, it wasn’t the Jews, Ahmed. It was youse. Denying the interview doesn’t work this time, because there’s proof. Asshole. But it’s taken the Brits years to decide they’ve finally had enough of his bile. Because after all, it’s just anti-Semitism.

International Support Apostates and Blasphemers Day: It’s not a joke. There are lawyers all over the world trying to help Muslims who are being tried and prosecuted under their nations’ blasphemy laws. But hey, let’s talk about how Christians in the U.S. are doing something awful sometime. Because it’s the same thing, isn’t? It’s all religion, right? (Insert eye roll here)

Banned because it’s true: Egypt banned a film about the modern exodus of the Jews from Egypt. Why? Because it makes Egypt look like a Jew-hating nation that drove out its Jews and stole their property? Hm. Let’s think about this. The Muslim Brotherhood leadership says they don’t hate Jews… hm… must think longer. Click on the link to see the trailer. It looks like an excellent film.

Time for another bullshit puff piece on how Mahmoud Abbas wants peace: Read this Reuters article and do me a favor? Find the relevance. Find the new information. Find the reason for it to exist other than to make Abbas look like he’s the peacemaker and Israel isn’t.

So now we have to ban shotguns, too: You don’t need an AR-15 or a semi-automatic pistol to kill a lot of people. This guy murdered four and wounded two more before being shot by police. Can we finally stop saying that it’s the gun culture of America doing this and admit our system of finding the mentally ill before they blow up and grab a gun is the issue?

Posted in Anti-Semitism, Media Bias, Middle East, palestinian politics, Religion, World | Comments Off on Your Thursday sniefs

Mideast Media Sampler 03/13/2013

Posted on 03/13/2013 by Soccerdad

1) Being a reporter means never having to say you’re sorry

The New York Times has reported on the UN report that raised doubts about the death of Omar Masharawi.

Isabel Kershner wrote U.N. Ties Gaza Baby’s Death to Palestinians:

Paul Danahar, the BBC Middle East bureau chief, wrote on his Twitter account that an Israeli shell had come through the roof of the small Gaza home. Mr. Danahar visited his grieving colleague there on Nov. 15 and posted a photograph of a roundish hole in the roof of a burned-out room.

But a March 6 report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the eight-day conflict, which ended with a cease-fire, stated that three people in the home — Omar, a woman and an 18-year-old youth — were most likely the victims of “what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel.”

The circumstances of those deaths are likely to remain in dispute. Israel’s military has not determined whether it hit the house or not, saying it does not have clear information about what happened. The BBC has reported that privately, military officials told journalists at the time that Israel had aimed at a militant who was hiding in the building.

There are a few things here. Kershner reports about the “roundish hole.” If that is the damage caused by Israeli mortars then there’s a basis for claiming that it was Israel who fired. That’s one of the points that Elder of Ziyon addressed originally. At the time he first wrote about this incident, an expert he had consulted observed that an Israeli round would have destroyed the home. None of the followups in the mainstream media have bothered to address this point. Writing that the facts of the case are “likely to remain in dispute” is a cop out. There are observations that could clarify what happened for those who want to make them.

Also Kershner mentions the BBC’s role in publicizing the event. I believe that if it had been known that it was a Hamas rocket that had hit the house, the death of Omar Masharawi would not have been news. But another factor driving the story was the team effort of the BBC to make sure that the story was publicized. BBC Watch has more on this angle.

Anti-Israel activist, Robert Mackey, writing at the Lede blog at the New York Times addressed the story in U.N. Report Reframes Debate Over Image of a Father’s Agony in Gaza:

Despite this lack of clarity, pro-Israel bloggers treated the United Nations report as definitive and immediately pressed the BBC and other news organizations to apologize for publishing a photograph of the bombed-out Masharawi home taken by a colleague of the boy’s father who wrote on Twitter that the damage was caused by “an Israeli shell.”

In response, at least one pro-Palestinian blogger noted that the single sentence in the United Nations report on the family includes an obvious factual error. The report said the bombing killed “a woman, her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult.” In fact, the child’s mother was present at his funeral the next day. As Jihad Masharawi explained on the night of the bombing, in a wrenching interview with the BBC while cradling his dead son in his arms, the explosion had killed his sister-in-law and badly wounded his brother.

Why did Mackey bring up the error? Max Fisher had noticed it too, but confirmed that the U.N. report indeed was about the same incident. It is typical of Mackey to bring up irrelevant points to dispute Israeli claims.

Jonathan Tobin summed up the (media’s) story in two paragraphs Don’t Let Facts Hinder Israel-Bashing:

This is a terrible tragedy that has all too often been aided and abetted by an international media eager to use shocking pictures and videos meant to depict Israeli atrocities to put forward a skewed version of what has happened in Gaza.

In this case, just as with the celebrated case of Mohammed al-Durrah–the picture of whose death in his father’s arms after supposedly being shot by Israelis at the beginning of the second intifada became a rallying point for Palestinians–the fictional narrative of Palestinian victimhood trumped the facts. Even after the story was conclusively debunked, the image of the dying child remains an icon of the campaign to defame Israel.

Similarly, Walter Russell Mead writes in Did the Palestinians murder Baby Omar? (h/t Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

After a century of effort, Palestinians remain feeble and divided in the realms of political and military action, but they are extremely good at calling attention to their suffering and creating sympathy for their cause. In this realm they can turn Israel’s strength and power against the Jewish state by highlighting their status as underdogs and attacking superior Israeli military capabilities for responding “disproportionately” to their derisory military force.

Israel has developed no effective counter to this Palestinian tactic and continues to exist in a situation in which Israel wins all or virtually all of the military contests, but the Palestinians convert their own military defeats into moral capital. Neither side finds this situation satisfactory, but neither side is able to do anything about it.

As Mead notes, without an international community willing to abet the spread of Palestinian propaganda, the claims of victimhood wouldn’t resonate.

Unfortunately, neither Tobin nor Mead credited Elder of Ziyon with bringing the matter to light. However poorly the mainstream media has dealt with the UN report, they likely wouldn’t have even mentioned it if Elder of Ziyon hadn’t publicized it.

Yesterday, Elder of Ziyoun provided a partial list of Palestinians killed by Hamas rockets.

The Mishrawi case is hardly unique. Unless you read the mainstream media that couldn’t quite figure out that many Gaza rockets fall short.

…

The question is, why can the members of the media not figure out that they are often being lied to, especially when it comes to civilian casualties? Especially when it comes from officials in a territory that can hardly be described as a bastion of free speech and transparency?

The only conclusion is that journalists’ ability to think critically is impaired when they have a preconceived idea of who is right and wrong. They take all evidence – even from proven liars, like Gaza’s Health Ministry – as proof their ideas were right to begin with. Israeli denials, even though they have been proven to be correct time and time again, are instead treated with the skepticism that is missing when listening to Gaza officials.

Simply put, in the Masharawi case, the mainstream media, led by the BBC, ignored the non-trivial possibility that the house had been hit by a Hamas rocket and simply focused on the one guilty party they were conditioned to suspect. It’s worth recalling one of Max Fisher’s tweets.

Notice how he uses “pro-Israel” to qualify those who asked him to follow up. Why wasn’t the issue accuracy?

No one in the mainstream media asked the most important questions. The witnesses gave very dramatic and specific descriptions of the explosion. Yet not a single reporter asked a demolitions expert if the explosions and damage were consistent with an Israeli shell. There don’t appear to have been any aircraft seen in the area at the time, either. Fisher’s implicit dismissal of his critics betrays a disturbing truth: reporting has gotten so bad, it is pro-Israel advocates who are the biggest sticklers for accuracy.

2) Mr. Friedman repeats himself

In Mr. Obama goes to Israel, Thomas Friedman writes:

For all these reasons, Obama could be the first sitting American president to visit Israel as a tourist.

Good news for Israel, right? Wrong. While there may be fewer reasons for the U.S. to take risks to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is still a powerful reason for Israel to do so. The status quo today may be tolerable for Israel, but it is not healthy. And more status quo means continued Israeli settlements in, and tacit annexation of, the West Bank. That’s why I think the most important thing Obama could do on his trip is to publicly and privately ask every Israeli official he meets these questions:

“Please tell me how your relentless settlement drive in the West Bank does not end up with Israel embedded there — forever ruling over 2.5 million Palestinians with a colonial-like administration that can only undermine Israel as a Jewish democracy and delegitimize Israel in the world community? I understand why Palestinian dysfunction and the Arab awakening make you wary, but still. Shouldn’t you be constantly testing and testing whether there is a Palestinian partner for a secure peace? After all, you have a huge interest in trying to midwife a decent West Bank Palestinian state that is modern, multireligious and pro-Western — a totally different model from the Muslim Brotherhood variants around you. Everyone is focused on me and what will I do. But, as a friend, I just want to know one thing: What is your long-term strategy? Do you even have one?”

Israel is not ruling over 2.5 million Palestinians and as David Bernstein recently noted No, Arabs Living Under Israeli Control are Not Going to Outnumber Jews Any Time Soon. (Bernstein implicitly accepts the claim that Israel does control the Arabs in the West Bank. That hasn’t been true since late 1995.)

The words Friedman puts into President Obama’s mouth, are Friedman’s words. He believes against all evidence that Israel will soon be an illegitimate state.

Friedman, though, presented an argument why Israel shouldn’t make any more concessions. Earlier he wrote:

Finally, while America’s need to forge Israeli-Palestinian peace has never been lower, the obstacles have never been higher: Israel has now implanted 300,000 settlers in the West Bank, and the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza have seriously eroded the appetite of the Israeli silent majority to withdraw from the West Bank, since one puny rocket alone from there could close Israel’s international airport in Lod.

Forget about a “puny rocket.” If Hamas would take over the West Bank all of Israel would be subject to threat that southern Israel had been subjected to until this past November (and could well be threatened with again). Why does Friedman so casually dismiss his own argument?

3) How is this pro-peace?

J-Street has a campaign in advance of President Obama’s visit to Israel:

So we’re asking you – when the President is at the Kotel, what should his note say? The President says he is taking a listening tour – we need to make sure he hears from us.

We’ll be delivering your prayers to the consulate in Jerusalem as soon as the President arrives in Israel, so for the rest of his trip he knows the American Jewish community has his back while pursuing peace in the region.

But wait!

Hamas: ‘Declaration Of War’ If Obama Visits Temple Mount. (h/t The Israel Link)

J-Street claims to be pro-Israel and pro-peace. If they’re really “pro-peace” how can they encourage President Obama to commit the provocative act of going to the Kotel?

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I have a friend in Heaven

Posted on 03/13/2013 by Meryl Yourish

No, seriously. I’m special. I’m getting emails from Heaven.

Email from Heaven

Now don’t you wish YOU had a friend in Heaven?

Posted in Humor | 1 Comment

Mideast Media Sampler 03/12/2013

Posted on 03/12/2013 by Soccerdad

Mendacious Max Beyond Iron Dome

Max Fisher, the blogger for the Washington Post who publicized the picture of Jihad Mishrawi has now responded to a new United Nations report that concluded that the rocket that killed Mishrawi’s son was likely fired by Hamas. Originally he was reticent to follow up with the new information available.

Unfortunately, Fisher’s followup is full of evasions. In United Nations report suggests Hamas may have killed Palestinian infant Omar Mishrawi, Fisher writes:

But it turns out that, according to a new United Nations draft report from the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the explosive that killed Omar Mishrawi may have actually been fired by the Gaza-based militant group Hamas, which has a reputation for missing. Though the initial report was less than clear on the matter (more on this below), the Associated Press now reports that a representative from the UN says the explosion “appeared to be attributable to a Palestinian rocket.” If true, this would be a significant shift in our understanding of Mishrawi’s death, which became a symbol of that month’s conflict.

I returned from vacation this morning with more than a few reader notes alerting me to the UN report and asking me to append my earlier post. I held off because the draft report was a bit sketchy, as draft reports can sometimes be. It does not name Mishrawi or his family, stating only, “On 14 November, a woman, her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in Al-Zaitoun were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel.” That’s the right time and location, but the wrong family relationship: Omar’s aunt, not his mother, was killed in the strike. While it was reasonable to wonder if this might still refer to the strike that killed Mishrawi, this single sentence was far from conclusive. The citation, which reads only “Case monitored by OHCHR,” didn’t offer many clues.

What’s wrong with this?
1) The word “suggests” in the title.
2) Hamas is called a “militant” group, not a terrorist group.
3) Fisher here is concerned with minutiae. The relationship of the woman is one of those things that gets misreported. Initially there were doubts that the damage to Mishrawi’s house was consistent with an Israeli missile, but that didn’t lead Fisher (or anyone) to raise the doubts then.

And of course, instead of writing “the evidence strongly suggests that it wasn’t an Israeli missile,” Fisher cites the BBC’s Jon Donnison:

A BBC story expresses some doubt about the UN report. The BBC’s Jon Donnison writes, “The Israeli military made no comment at the time of the incident but never denied carrying out the strike. Privately, military officials briefed journalists that they had been targeting a militant who was in the building.” Donnison adds, “The Israeli military had reported no rockets being fired out of Gaza so soon after the start of the conflict.”

Donnison is from the BBC, not exactly known for its objectivity concerning Israel. Furthermore the person involved is an employee of BBC so questions of objectivity come up. (After the death, the BBC editor for the Middle East said, “We are all one team…”)

Fisher accepts Donnison’s claim about the IDF not reporting any rockets so early in the conflict is dubious. Check the timestamps on the following tweets.

Within three hours the IDF had already reported a number of rockets had been fired into Israel.

Why is this important? Fisher was initially skeptical of the UN report because it misidentified one of the dead. Then when Jon Donnison made an easily verified (or disproved) claim, Fisher accepted it uncritically. This is a microcosm of the problem of Middle East reporting: claims that blame Israel are accepted by purportedly objective journalists without any checking, but claims that exonerate Israel are treated with the utmost skepticism if they aren’t ignored altogether.

Consider what was reported at the time, by Fisher.

An Israeli round hit Misharawi’s four-room home in Gaza Wednesday, killing his son, according to BBC Middle East bureau chief Paul Danahar, who arrived in Gaza earlier Thursday. Misharawi’s sister-in-law was also killed, and his brother wounded. Misharawi told Danahar that, when the round landed, there was no fighting in his residential neighborhood.

“We’re all one team in Gaza,” Danahar told me, saying that Misharawi is a BBC video and photo editor. After spending a “few hours” with his grieving colleague, he wrote on Twitter, ”Questioned asked here is: if Israel can kill a man riding on a moving motorbike (as they did last month) how did Jihad’s son get killed.”

There was no fighting in the neighborhood. Israel, unlike Hamas, doesn’t target civilians. Israel, of course, makes mistakes. However the fact that there was no fighting, means that there was no reason for Israel to target that neighborhood. Instead the absence of fighting was used by Fisher’s interlocutors as a reason to suggest that Israel had targeted innocents. (If they could pick out a specific terrorist, how could they miss so badly and kill an innocent?)

Fisher was taking the BBC and Mishrawi family’s attitudes and using those attitudes to frame the story. Now he steps back and tells us:

The question of which “side” bears responsibility for Mishrawi’s death is of course important, if at the moment not fully known, in its own right. It’s also, in some ways, part of a larger battler over symbolism and narrative in the Israel-Palestine conflict. As I wrote at the time, the much-circulated photo of Mishrawi was championed by critics of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinian territories, held up as a microcosm of what they argued was an unjust conflict that disproportionately affected Palestinians. A small but troubling minorities of those critics suggested the Israeli military does not care about, or even willfully targeted, Palestinian children.

Meanwhile, some observers sympathetic to the Israeli strikes pointed out, with what may have been prescience, that Hamas rockets often miss and might have landed on Mishrawi’s house. They argued, as they are again arguing today, that the media attention on the photo underscores their suspicion that the world does not give Israel a fair shake.

Blame was an important part of his original narrative. While attributing part of the argument to “critics of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinian territories,” it appears that Fisher himself agrees with said “critics.” (He validates the general “critics” by noting “small but troubling minorities” of that group. Of course, he quoted Paul Danahar one of that smaller group, uncritically.)

In 2012, prior to Pillar of Defense, rockets were fired into Israel every month. Most months it was more than ten rockets and in three of them it was more than 100 rockets. In November (including Pillar of Defense) over 1000 rockets were fired into Israel.

When assigning blame, this was not part of Fisher’s calculus. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians were under threat of attack. Many thousands were regularly attacked and Israel refrained from any major response.

Fisher poses as an objective observer; one above taking sides. Clearly, the tragedies of the Middle East, to Fisher, are caused by both sides.
So one side is a liberal Western style democracy; the other is a terrorist organization running an increasingly oppressive religious society.
One side deliberately targets civilians; the other does its best to avoid them.
One side declares its genocidal aims; the other has made significant, concrete concession to advance the cause of peace. (That’s right Hamas came to power after Israel disengaged from Gaza.)
One side seeks to kill the other; the other side, despite threats, attempts to keep up humanitarian aid to its enemies.

The problem with Fisher’s dispassionate even-handedness is that it is applied to a manifestly uneven situation. Rather than helping people understand the Middle East, Fisher’s efforts effectively perpetuate the grievances that fuel the conflict.

His efforts to play down the UN report stand in contrast to the way he hyped the story. Let me ask the question I asked yesterday again:

If it had been known for certain at the time of Omar Mishrawi’s death that he had been killed by a Hamas rocket, would it have been front page news?

Reading Max Fisher’s belated equivocations, I can only conclude that it was the apparent culpability of Israel that made the picture newsworthy.

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Will the last Jew leaving Europe/South America/Turkey please turn out the lights?

Posted on 03/12/2013 by Meryl Yourish

The exodus is gathering strength. Jews are leaving countries where they are being persecuted–again.

Ohana says that French Jews actually leave for a variety of reasons that include, but are not limited to, intolerance. “There are other motivations…to pursue better opportunities in respect to a society that no longer allows them to think big.” In other words: it’s France itself that has become weak.

What most New York transplants have in common is that they attended the public schools, formed by the “secular state,” but they have realized that in the past 5-6 years that it has changed because of the rampant religious controversies.

Aharon, a designer in a start-up says the tension “forces you to walk with your head down, put a hat on to conceal the kippah.” He says police too often classify attacks as simple robberies or assaults, rather than hate crimes, underplaying the extent of anti-Semitism.

Even more ironic: The French Jewish community is mostly made up of Jews that were forced to flee Arab nations after the founding of Israel.

More than 80% of the almost 600,000 French Jews — France is the second highest community, apart from the US, outside of Israel — come from Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. Sephardic families who had spent centuries in coexistance with Muslims were forced to leave the Maghreb because of Arabic pogroms in the 1950s and ‘60s and found in France an accord between monotheistic faiths. “The symptoms of Muslim intolerance against us began before 2002- adds Daniel, a French bank worker in Manhattan- but the second Intifada made the atmosphere asphyxiating”. “The killing of Ilan Halimi, 23, in February 2006 was the first shock. Then others followed suit,” explains David, father of two, from the Parisian suburb of Les Lilas. “When I was a school boy, 20% of the residents were Jewish, now there’s almost none of them still there.”

Venezuela has lost a significant number of Jews thanks to Hugo Chavez.

Over the past 14 years, Venezuelan Jews have been leaving the country in droves. When Chavez was elected in 1999, there were more than 20,000 Jews living in Venezuela. Today the community is estimated to have fallen to less than half that number.

Jews were not the only ones to take flight from the Chavez regime. Hundreds of thousands of upper- and middle-class Venezuelans left during the Chavez years, seeking to escape Venezuela’s anti-business climate, the government’s nationalization of private companies, economic crises and a soaring crime rate. Jews left for many of the same reasons, with anti-Semitism by all accounts taking a back seat to concerns for economic and physical security.

I find it telling that every story seems to insist that Jews are not leaving because of anti-Semitism, that it’s only a part of the reason. No, really, it’s just a small part. And yet–they leave. Cozying up to Iran, demonizing the Venezeulan Jewish community… just a coincidence.

In Turkey, it’s outright anti-Semitism driving away Turkey’s Jews.

When Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey last week declared Zionism a “crime against humanity,” Turkish Jews had fresh reason to worry about the Islamist direction of Mr. Erdogan’s rule in the once proudly secular state. His statement at a United Nations gathering in Vienna follows the government’s announcement in November that Turkey would prosecute in absentia four former Israeli military commanders for their role in a 2010 clash with a flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip that left nine Turks dead.

These have been head-spinning times for Turkey’s Jews, who constitute the largest such community in any Muslim country. Officially the Jewish population is 24,000, but Jewish leaders tell me the true number is closer to 14,000 as Jews have been leaving or sending their families abroad.

Once again, we see that it’s a seemingly irreversible trend.

In an Izmir high-rise apartment last year, I met a Jewish couple—a school principal and a commercial trader—whose forebears fled medieval Venice for Turkey. Both of their children now reside in America. After the couple’s generation passes, the wife told me with a sad certainty, “Turkey is finished for the Jews.”

The Jewish communities of Yemen are nearly gone. There is no longer a Jewish community in Iraq. Iran’s Jews remain only because they are forbidden by law to leave as a family unit. The whole sordid history of Jewish expulsion from Arab and Muslim countries can be read at the Jewish Virtual Library.

2500-year-old communities will soon be extinct, their synagogues knocked down or turned into museums for people to ooh and aah over the tolerance of Muslims during the Inquisition. The fact that Jews are no longer welcome in Islamic lands? Well, that’s their own fault. Dirty Zionists.

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Your job search laugh of the day

Posted on 03/12/2013 by Meryl Yourish

Clicked the link on a job listing an agency sent me, and this was in the sidebar.

Job search tips

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! That’s so funny. Three job offers. In this economy. Now pull the other leg. AHAHAHAHAHA!!!

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The rise and fall of a lie about Israel

Posted on 03/11/2013 by Meryl Yourish

Last November, a BBC stringer’s 11-month-old boy was killed by rocket fire. The news media rushed the story around the world, blaming an Israeli airstrike, even though the IDF denied any airstrike in that particular location. There is no shortage of high–profile placement of photos of the grieving father holding his dead child.

Only a few bloggers questioned whether or not Israel was responsible.

Turns out it was Hamas.

Don’t count on the same kind of coverage of the explanation. Do count on every news outlet reprinting the photo.

In the meantime, please note that the AP emphasizes the “maybe” aspect of the story, since it clears Israel of the charge of the baby’s death. It did no such thing when it blamed an Israeli airstrike for the death. The Washington Post ran the photo–very large–on its front page and ran an in-depth article blaming Israel.

A U.N. report indicates an errant Palestinian rocket, not an Israeli airstrike, likely killed the baby of a BBC reporter during fighting in the Hamas-ruled territory last November.

The death of Omar al-Masharawi, the 11-month-old son of BBC stringer Jihad al-Masharawi, became a symbol of what Palestinians see as Israeli aggression during eight days of fighting that killed more than 160 Palestinians and six Israelis. A woman was killed alongside the baby.

I see very little to be hopeful in this. Sure, Israel was cleared. But the damage was done six months ago, when the world media ran those photos and blamed Israel for the death of a baby. Israel always has to fight two wars for every one: The actual war, and the war in the media that is always against Israel.

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Mideast Media Sampler 03/11/2013

Posted on 03/11/2013 by Soccerdad

1) More fallout over the Samira Ibrahim selection

Robert Mackey has established himself as an anti-Israel activist.

Following last week’s revelation that Egyptian activist Samira Ibrahim had been making antisemitic and anti-American comments, Mackey was back in business. He asked, Samuel Tadros, the scholar who had uncovered the statements if he (Tadros) was a Copt. Since Tadros’s religion was irrelevant to the story there was not point in asking. Some found the question inappropriate. Eric Trager rebuked Mackey.

Mackey defended himself, claiming that he was seeking to provide “context.” Those familiar with his work regarding Israel know that context is not one of his strong suits. Mackey’s work on the Ibrahim story can be summed up by looking at two paragraphs of his report, Egyptian Activist Subjected to ‘Virginity Test’ Dropped From U.S. Honors List for Tweets. (Note. too, that the title is specific about Ibrahim’s claim to fame, not about her sins.)

Ms. Ibrahim did not respond to requests for comment, but late Thursday she appeared to back away from the claim that she had been hacked in a new update to her Twitter feed which read: “I refused to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America for previous comments hostile towards Zionism under pressure from the American government so the prize was withdrawn.”

She did not back away from the claim. She responded once a writer for the Times of Israel showed that her claim of being hacked was likely untrue.

After playing up Ibrahim’s dual nature, the final paragraph of Mackey’s report reads:

In what may have been an attempt to repair some of the damage, Ms. Ibrahim’s most recent update on Twitter compared the plight of Egypt’s Christian Coptic minority to that of Jews who were forced to leave the country decades ago. “What is happening to the Copts now in Egypt previously happened to the Jews,” she wrote. “Enough racism, enough hatred, Egypt is for all Egyptians.”

It was too little, too late.

Lee Smith faults the State Department for the fiasco.

It is unfair that the American embassy in Cairo is taking most of the blame for the Ibrahim affair. Yes, they should’ve done a better job of vetting her before sending her name on to Washington. To get a read on Ibrahim’s political positions, all embassy staff had to do was check with some of Egypt’s genuine liberal activists, like those who since the story broke have criticized her vicious opinions, or like Samuel Tadros, or Mina Rezkalla and Amr Bargisi, or anyone from the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth.

But that hardly excuses management at Foggy Bottom, who should have smelled something fishy at the outset. Did no one question whether or not Ibrahim was really—as her biography stated before it was scrubbed from the State Department’s website—“arrested” in high school for writing a paper criticizing Arab leaders’ insincere support of the Palestinian cause? Maybe a Mubarak loyalist at the school gave her a stern talking to, maybe her parents were called in, maybe she was interrogated by a security official, but actually put in jail? For a high school paper? I am trying to imagine how State Department officials, including those in the Bureau of Near East Affairs with many years of experience in a region full of hard-security regimes, rationalized this: “Sure, at the infamous Tora prison there was one bloc set aside for hardcore Islamists—and another for militant high school essayists.” “But if the Mubarak regime’s control of Egypt was so comprehensive, why couldn’t state security or the military stop Iranian missiles from getting into Hamas’ hands via the Sinai?” “That’s because they chose instead to stop teenage schoolgirls from writing that Mubarak didn’t support Hamas.” This absurdity is not on the embassy alone but the entire State Department.

Michael Rubin, though, disagrees with Smith on the culpability of the American embassy in Cairo.

That is certainly right, but it only scratches the surface. Something is very rotten at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo which was, until the 2003 Iraq War, the largest U.S. embassy in the world. “Samiragate” is the rule rather than the exception. Remember, after an Egyptian-American posted on YoutTube the trailer for an amateurish film mocking the Prophet Muhammad, the embassy overruled the State Department and tweeted apologies to the militants attacking the embassy. Public affairs officer Larry Schwartz became the fall guy for that episode, but he merely reflected the culture the embassy cultivated.

Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, is a career foreign service officer who has led the embassy since 2010. She has set the tone for the embassy’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood. Explaining why Mohamed Morsi deserved American F-16 fighters, despite an increasing disdain for the rule of law and revelations about his hateful incitement, Patterson declared Morsi deserved the weaponry so Egypt can “continue to serve as a force for peace, security, and leadership as the Middle East proceeds with its challenging yet essential journey toward democracy.”

Here’s the kicker: Guess who seems to be a finalist under Secretary of State John Kerry for a promotion to become assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs? That’s right, Anne Patterson. If Samiragate was truly the result of incompetence, then Patterson could use her new position to bring that quality to the broader Middle East. Conversely, if it really was illustrative of the cultural and political bubble that Patterson imbued or let develop in her staff, then get ready for several more years of self-inflicted wounds.

2) A defining image, redefined

The defining image of Israel’s defensive war, Pillor of Defense, was the picture of BBC journalist Jihad Mishrawi holding his dead son, said to have been killed by an Israeli missile strike. Elder of Ziyon immediately asked a number of questions about the report.

Still, few media outlets were bothered by these questions.

For example, Max Fisher of the Washington Post wrote The story behind the photo: Journalist’s 11-month-old son killed in Gaza strikes.

Reuters also had a photographer at the Gaza City hospital where Misharawi took his son. The story that these photos tell, of loss and confusion, may help inform the Palestinian reactions – and, as the photos continue to spread widely on social media, perhaps the reactions from beyond the Palestinian territories – to the violence between Israel and Gaza.

Patrick Pexton, then the ombudsman of the Washington Post, defended the paper’s decision, Photo of dead baby in Gaza holds part of the ‘truth’:

MaryAnne Golon, The Post’s director of photography, explained to me that the purpose of any front-page photo, regardless of subject, is to move the reader, whether through its beauty, sentiment or drama.

“When we looked at the selection that night of Middle East photos from the wire services, this photo got everyone in the gut,” Golon said. “It went straight to the heart, this sobbing man who just lost his baby son.”

Post staff then authenticated and verified the facts behind the Associated Press photo. The dead baby was real. The bombing was real.

Pexton, whose job it was to defend journalistic practices, apparently felt that “truth” is not absolute.

Last week a report from the UN confirmed Elder of Ziyon’s speculation. It isn’t clear that any publication or organization have issued any corrections.

Perhaps they will; perhaps they won’t.

But here’s the important question: If it had been known for certain at the time of Omar Mishrawi’s death that he had been killed by a Hamas rocket, would it have been front page news? Or is it only news when Israel, defending its citizens, makes a rare mistake?

Posted in Israel, Media, Media Bias | Tagged | Comments Off on Mideast Media Sampler 03/11/2013

The EU’s flying pig moment

Posted on 03/10/2013 by Meryl Yourish

Apparently, not all the members of the EU are Israel-haters.

Some 20 European Union Parliament Members sent a letter to the EU Foreign Policy Chief in which they strongly condemned remarks made by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month. The Turkish PM drew international condemnation when he said that Zionism is a crime against humanity during a UN conference.

This is the first time that such a large number of European parliamentarians come out so strongly against anti-Israel statements.

For comparison’s sake, there are 751 members of the EU Parliament. But I do like this part:

“As a fellow democracy, we in the European Union must support Israel against those who challenge the country’s very existence. That was clearly Mr. Erdogan’s intentions when he coupled Zionism with Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Fascism – three manifestations of hate we in the European Union fight against.

“The banality of Mr. Erdogan’s comparison needs little explanation: Zionism is the fulfillment of the national rights and aspirations of the Jewish people and must not be denied.”

Will anything come of it?

Doubtful. But at least people are actually responding to Erdogan’s despicable remarks.

Posted in Israel, Turkey, World | Comments Off on The EU’s flying pig moment

Mideast Media Sampler 03/08/2013

Posted on 03/08/2013 by Soccerdad

The state of the Secretaries of State

One of John Kerry’s first acts in office as Secretary of State was a good one. Lee Smith writes in John Kerry Roasts Turkey:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not a man who minces words. He has called Israel a “terrorist state” and has suggested that “Allah would punish” Israel for its inhumane actions in Gaza. Usually, the United States pretends not to hear Erdogan’s rants—but not on Friday, when John Kerry, while visiting Ankara during his first trip abroad as secretary of state, denounced Erdogan for calling Zionism “a crime against humanity.” In response to Erdogan, Kerry said: “We not only disagree with it, we found it objectionable.”

On Monday at AIPAC, Vice President Joe Biden praised Kerry for standing up to the Turkish prime minister—and Kerry deserved the props. Kerry’s comment is as critical as State Department language gets regarding a NATO ally—and it’s about time. Policymakers from the Bush and Obama Administrations have sweet-talked and protected Erdogan since his Justice and Development party, known by its Turkish acronym AKP, came to power in 2003. Both White Houses saw Turkey as the model for moderate Islamism, a political current ostensibly willing to embrace democratic norms and project friendly power abroad, including the continuation of its strategic relationship with Israel. They believed Erdogan held the future of U.S. Middle East policy in his hands.

However his next high profile effort did not go so well.

Samuel Tadros reported in the Weekly Standard, Michelle Obama and John Kerry to Honor Anti-Semite and 9/11 Fan:

On Friday March 8, Michelle Obama will join John Kerry at a special ceremony at the State Department to present ten women the Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award. The award, says the press release, is given to “women around the globe who have shown exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for women’s rights and empowerment, often at great personal risk.”

…

Samira Ibrahim, as the State Department’s profile describes her, “was among seven women subjected by the Egyptian military to forced virginity tests in March 2011.” The press release further notes that Samira “was arrested while in high school for writing a paper that criticized Arab leaders’ insincere support to the Palestinian cause.” Apparently, the State Department is unaware of her other convictions.

On Twitter, Ibrahim is quite blunt regarding her views. On July 18 of last year, after five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver were killed a suicide bombing attack, Ibrahim jubilantly tweeted: “An explosion on a bus carrying Israelis in Burgas airport in Bulgaria on the Black Sea. Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news.”

When the news first broke, Ibrahim claimed that her Twitter account had been hacked. The State Department said that it would look into the charges. But a quick analysis done by Arieh Kovler at the Times of Israel suggested that Ibrahim was lying about being hacked.

At that point apparently the State Department decided to withdraw the award. Ms. Ibrahim’s response pretty much confirms that her offensive tweets were not the result of hacks. Lee Smith followed up at the Weekly Standard.

Finally, Ibrahim herself has spoken, writing in Arabic on her Twitter page. Egyptian democracy activist Mina Rezkalla provides the translation: “I refuse to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America regarding my previous anti-Zionist statements under pressure from American government therefore they withdrew the award.”

Daled Amos followed the controversy in more detail.

A couple of other past secretaries of state have been in the news lately.

Sohrab Ahmari reviewed Kim Ghattas’s account of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, The Secretary. (The full article is available through the link here.) Ahmari opens with this devastating paragraph:

Hillary Rodham Clinton was the best secretary of state in U.S. history—if the amount of travel abroad is the criterion by which we judge the success of America’s top diplomat. Mrs. Clinton logged a million miles flying around the world during President Barack Obama’s first term. It’s a remarkable number: The Earth is 25,000 miles in circumference, so the secretary circled the globe 40 times in four years. Even more remarkable is that one can’t think of a signature accomplishment from all this on-the-go diplomacy.

Barry Rubin looked at one of her failures: a diplomatic statement when bluntness was called for:

In fact, Usama bin Ladin was killed on May 2, 2011, and the news was obvious about how he had been given safe haven and protected by at least some elements in Pakistan’s government. Remarkably, there was no serious change in U.S. policy toward Pakistan despite the fact that this regime treated badly and threw into prison the Pakistani doctor who helped the United States get bin Ladin. Nothing is more immoral than to betray friends.

One of the keys to this foolishness was an interview then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a week earlier:

“We’ve admired the way Pakistan has pulled together to go after those elements of the Taliban that are directly threatening them. And I think that the people of Pakistan are so unified now in support of this military action.”

Note to Hillary: Of course Pakistan has gone after those elements in the Taliban that were directly threatening them. The problem is that it didn’t do anything about those elements in al-Qaida or the Taliban who were directly threatening the United States. How many billions of dollars in aid was given by the Obama Administration to Pakistan despite that reality? And why hasn’t U.S. policy changed almost two years after it became public that bin Ladin, the biggest single mass murderer of American civilians in history, was Pakistan’s privileged guest?

James Baker too has been busy. He recently gave an interview to Al Arabiya (h/t Elder of Ziyon)

One solution to promote peace between Palestinians and Israelis is to have non-Hamas members from the Gaza Strip negotiating peace, a former U.S. official told Al Arabiya.

“Israel and the United States will not work with Hamas because it is seen to be a terrorist organization,” James Baker, who served as the Chief of Staff in the final year of the administration of President George H.W. Bush said.

Baker, also the Secretary of State during H. W. Bush’s era, cited strategies used in the Madrid Conference in 1991, where Palestinians who were not members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – listed as a terrorist organization by Washington and Tel Aviv at the time – to negotiate peace with the Israelis.

Barry Rubin wrote in an e-mail that in 1991, the Palestinians who came, notably including Nabil Sha’ath, actually were members of the PLO. Presumably, Baker’s vision now means employing a similar subterfuge. As Elder of Ziyon noted, he seems to feel that it is a bigger problem that Hamas is excluded from peace talks than that Hamas rejects peace with Israel. So perhaps he feels such a subterfuge is necessary.

But Baker has difficulty in assessing bad actors. In the Truth about Syria, Barry Rubin wrote:

What do you do if the United States secretary of state comes into your office and presents evidence that you are supporting terrorists? Simple. In September 1990, Secretary of State James Baker met with Hafiz and gave him a detailed account of terrorism sponsorship. And Hafiz did do something about it: three Jordanian agents who supplied the information were tracked down and killed. Syria kept on fomenting terrorism; the United States did very little in retaliation.

But it gets even better: precisely six years after his betrayal by Hafiz, Baker was asked by the White House to recommend what U.S. policy should be on Iraq and the Middle East in general. In explaining why he favored dialogue with Syria, Baker recalled the “success” of his 1990 talks with Hafiz in getting Syria to stop sponsoring terrorism. By 2006, Hamas’s top leaders—and the most hardline of all–Khalid Mashal and Musa Abu Marzouq lived under the regime’s protection in Damascus, as did Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shallah. When Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier in Gaza in 2006, helping to inspire the Hizballah copycat attack that would set off a Lebanon-Israel war, Mashal announced the operation’s success to journalists at a Damascus hotel.

It seems, unfortunately, that over the past twenty five years the United States has been blessed with a number of top diplomats who feel that diplomacy means fooling themselves about enemy’s intentions.

Posted in Israel | 1 Comment

The AP’s pig-flying moment

Posted on 03/08/2013 by Meryl Yourish

What’s this? An honest, [mostly] unbiased story on Israel from the AP?

Israeli police have entered Jerusalem’s holiest site to disperse hundreds of Palestinians who were throwing rocks.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Palestinian worshipers rioted after Friday Muslim prayers at the hilltop site in the Old City of Jerusalem. It’s known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, where the Al-Aqsa Mosque stands.

They used the r-word, not the p-word (protestors).

I give them a C for effort. Because they don’t get high grades until ALL their stories retain a decent amount of balance.

Posted in Israel, Media Bias | Comments Off on The AP’s pig-flying moment

Mideast Media Sampler 03/07/2013

Posted on 03/07/2013 by Soccerdad

Those “apartheid” buses

A number of British publications recently featured articles about some new Israeli bus lines devoted to transporting Arab residents of Judea and Samaria into Israel. These publications have outrageously called the buses, “apartheid” buses.

Lori Lowenthal Marcus lays out some of the background (and much more):

First of all, all Israeli citizens are permitted to ride all Israeli transportation vehicles, whether they are Arab, Finnish or Lithuanian, Jewish, Muslim, Christian or Buddhist.

Second, any non-citizen of Israel, just as is the case with every other country in the world, has to show identification when entering Israel’s official borders – it is true for American citizens entering Canada and Mexico, just as it is the case for citizens of the Palestinian Authority who wish to enter Israel.

Third, Israeli citizens who live in Judea and Samaria pay taxes, a portion of which subsidize the transportation infrastructure and vehicles, whereas Arabs who live in the PA towns do not. In fact, taxes paid by Arabs in Israel are turned over to the PA to support their infrastructure, which includes – or should – transportation services for their residents.

One consequence of the preceding points is that the Israeli bus lines travel from and to all areas in which tax-paying Israeli citizens live – from Jerusalem to Shilo, from Tel Aviv to Efrat, and so forth. The Israeli bus companies do not stop at, for example, the Arab town of Ramallah, just as they do not stop at non-authorized Jewish towns such as Givat Har-el.

The toughest part of this smear to understand is something that Adam Levick lays out in The factual and logical failures behind accusations of ‘racist’ Israeli bus lines:

But, one question remains: How would it be racist against ‘Palestinians’ if service on a bus line operating in the West Bank was for ‘Palestinians only’? That is, how could Palestinians be victims of racism if service on a public transportation system was denied to Jews?

The usual justification for judging Israel as an “apartheid” society is some injustice that Israel supposedly inflicts on the Palestinians. In this case it is an extra benefit! I know we keep hearing from Israel’s detractors that there’s a need for “debate” over Israeli policies. This latest example shows that the debate means justifying condemnations that are not even logically coherent.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t only British publications promoting this libel. Robert Mackey, the anti-Israel activist posing at the New York Times weighed in with, Israelis Divided Over Separate Bus Lines for Arabs and Jews in Occupied West Bank. As CAMERA notes, unsurprisingly,
Citing Only Critics, Robert Mackey Claims Ignorance of Arab Supporters of New Bus Lines:

If Mackey really missed these stories, then what does that say
about his journalistic skills? Alternatively, if he didn’t miss them,
and just said that he did, then he’s just plain lying. Either way, New York Times readers deserve better.

Mackey really doesn’t believe in debate over Israeli policies. (At the end of his article he cites a controversial statement made by Ehud Barak – that isn’t even applicable to this case – to defend his posture.) He only believes in condemnation.

While it’s not entirely relevant to this topic, David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy recently wrote, No, Arabs Living Under Israeli Control are Not Going to Outnumber Jews Any Time Soon.

Let’s do the numbers. There are approximately 6.4 million Jews (including “Jews” who are not recognized by the Israeli Interior ministry as such because they are not Jewish under Jewish law). There are also approximately 1.6 million Arabs living in Israel, and 2.5 million (though this is debated) in the West Bank. Of the latter, an estimated 2.3 million live in areas under Palestinian civil control, and joint Israeli-Palestinian military control. Even giving a liberal construction to “living under Israeli control”, that makes roughly 6.4 million against 4.1 million. Given a Jewish birth rate of 2.9 per family, plus net Jewish immigration to Israel, there is not likely to be a majority of Arabs in the territory under Israeli control any time soon.

Criticisms and condemnations of Israel for “occupation” use the demographic threat as a reason for Israel to address the problem immediately. The “apartheid” charges stem from the “demographic threat” that may or may not emerge and liberally applied to the current situation. The desperation of Israel’s enemies is apparent from the logical contortions they need to employ to make their case.

Posted in Israel | Tagged | Comments Off on Mideast Media Sampler 03/07/2013

Thursday (right day) briefs

Posted on 03/07/2013 by Meryl Yourish

I have been a day off all week. ALL WEEK. And it’s very frustrating, because I’m a day ahead of myself and that means there’s one more day to deal with before the weekend.

Yeah, that’s because it’s not our plague: Israel has beaten back the locusts that came from Egypt. And because Jews are Jews, an Orthodox rabbi has issued a statement that no, locusts are not kosher, and may not be eaten, once again proving my statement that if only the Arabs would leave us alone, we would destroy ourselves from within–by arguing all the time. Meantime, over in the Gaza Strip, Hamas is telling its citizens not to worry, that the locusts are harmless.

“It represents no kind of danger or harms to people and plants, ” Bakheet said, adding that “the situation is under full control and protection of the ministry of agriculture.”

Farmers said that 10 locusts were founded in each dunum (1,000 square meters). Officials of the agriculture ministry said it would be dangerous if huge swarms of locust cover an area of 30 dunums (30,000 square meters).

The skies of southern Israel were blackened by locusts. But apparently, they skipped Gaza completely. Riiiiight.

Hope his cancer treatment turns out as well as Hugh Chavez’s: Chipmunk Cheeks Nasrallah is in Iran, getting cancer treatments–because his country has been ruled or infested by terrorists for so long that their healthcare sucks as bad as Venezuela’s–and while he’s there, he’s getting more marching orders from Iranian clerics. Hey, Nasrallah, may your lifespan match the plague of locusts in Israel!

Palestinians heart Chavez: Not just the PA. Also Bashar Assad and the rest of the neighborhood tyrants. That says it all.

But–but–Dennis Rodman said he doesn’t want war! North Korea’s latest lunatic-in-charge is threatening the U.S. with nuclear war again. Why? Because China and the U.S. are working on sanctions for NorK’s latest violation of UN resolutions–you know, the latest nuclear bomb test that had Iranians taking notes and salivating for their own test.

Sidenote: Every single time now–EVERY SINGLE TIME North Korea comes on my radar screen, I think of this:

Posted in Hamas, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, World | 2 Comments

Thundersnow briefs

Posted on 03/06/2013 by Meryl Yourish

Ding-dong: Hugo Chavez is dead. Unfortunately, the damage he’s done to Venezuela will live on. However–Iran has to find a new partner in crime there. Meantime, his apologists are so, so sad today. Awww. Sucks to be them. Also, great medical work there, Cuba! You saved him! Oh. Wait.

Rand Paul goes to Washington: Rand Paul is filibustering John Brennan’s CIA nomination. You can watch it live. It’s to protest the refusal of the Obama administration to say flat-out that he will not used drones to kill Americans on American soil without due process, regardless of whether or not they’re accused of terrorism.

Yeah, Iran is getting closer to nukes: Awesome. Our new Secretary of State admits that Iran is getting closer to having nuclear weapons. So. What are you going to do about it?

Someone at the New York Times must be off today: There’s an op-ed in the Times calling for an end to the Arab boycott of Israel, and it doesn’t slam Israel. People must be fainting all over the world after having read this one.

Posted in Media Bias, Politics, The One, World | Comments Off on Thundersnow briefs