Clutching a toy basketball, his face contorted by tears, this is Moshe Holtzberg at today's memorial service for his parents. The two-year-old orphan's rabbi father and mother were murdered in Mumbai's Jewish centre(AP via Daily Mail)
In the wake of mainstream-media whitewashing the motivations of Islamic terrorists in India:
In They're Winning, terrorism expert Steve Emerson says there’s no hope of victory in the war on terrorism until we call it what it really is.
Watching and reading the last 5 days of reports of the Mumbai attacks was an Alice in Wonderland experience. Even after an Islamic terrorist group took credit, TV anchors and reporters assiduously avoided the term Islamic terrorist. They must have consulted with the Thesaurus for the Politically Correct to determine that the word “gunmen” would not offend any jihadist.
The real truth is that there is war against the West and the Jews by Islamic jihadists.
On Wednesday, even though everyone knew by then that the perpetrators were jihadists, CNN constantly referred to the terrorists as “extremists”—with no modifier. Hell, they could have been the Basque ETA or the ultra right wing U.S. militia. Then a CNN anchor asked his guest with totally innocence, “Now why would an extremist group target a Jewish house of worship?” Because, my dear politically correct anchor, it was an Islamist terrorist group.
Last year, the Departments of State and Homeland Security issued an internal memorandum that henceforth no one could use the term “Islamic terrorists” and could only use the generic term “militant” or “extremist.” Even President Bush, who once invoked the term “Islamofacism,” now refuses to use the term Islamic terrorist.
It is time to stop caving in to the PC crowd. If we refuse to use the term Islamic terrorist, we conveniently take away any onus of responsibility for Islamic groups to halt the murderous ideology they propagate. In fact, in nearly EVERY claim of responsibility, which I studied, for hundreds of violent Islamic attacks which took place since 9/11, the common justification by the Muslim terrorist perpetrator was that there was a “war against Muslims” by the West and the Jews that had to be avenged. The real truth is that there is war against the West and the Jews by Islamic jihadists. And no amount of territorial withdrawal or peace negotiations will assuage them.
In the final Presidential debate, Sen. John McCain was non-specific in calling for exposure of Sen. Barack Obama's history with and relation to the actions of ACORN, which is alleged to have coerced bankers to issue mortgages to underqualified, credit-risky, minorities. The defaulted loans are fundamental to the US investment banking disaster. Today, AP confirms the FBI is investigating ACORN for suspicion of voter-registration fraud.
A second senior law enforcement official says the FBI was looking at results of recent raids on ACORN offices in several states for any evidence of a coordinated national scam.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election.
ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, says it has registered 1.3 million young people, minorities and poor and working-class voters — most of whom tend to be Democrats.
There are concerns about the nature of Sen. Obama's qualifications, ideologies, influences, and financial supporters which the mainstream media has avoided reporting about- which have been spotlighted in the new-media and the blogosphere.
Barack Obama poses with Kenyan relatives. Blogger "All the Latest News" writes: "The major reason that Obama will not release his birth certificate is that his father’s race is not listed as “black” but as “Arabic” which is how many Kenyan passports from the 1960s were issued."
CNN reporter Richard Allen Greene designates 'fact'-checking websites as the final arbiters of online truth from fraud. But as the article points-out, former Pennsylvania Attorney General Phillip J. Berg (currently challenging Obama's naturalization qualification in the courts) who has vetted the the 'fact-checkers'?
The Obama rumors have spurred action both for and against the Illinois senator -- including a suit filed in Pennsylvania arguing that he is not eligible to be president because he is not a "natural-born U.S. citizen," and a Web site at isobamamuslim.com that contains a single word: "No."
Philip J. Berg illustrates how hard it is to quash rumors once they spread.
The Philadelphia-area lawyer, who filed the suit against Obama's candidacy, is aware that the Web site FactCheck.org has examined Obama's Hawaii birth certificate and ruled it kosher.
But he doesn't believe it.
"FactCheck.org is owned by Annenberg of Chicago, where Obama sat on the board," the lawyer said, dismissing the Web site's verdict.
FactCheck.org describes itself as a "nonpartisan, nonprofit 'consumer advocate' for voters." It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
There are other legitmate criticisms and investigations of Sen. Obama which the media intentionally ignores or chooses to downplay due to their own political biases, claims Melanie Phillips, in her column in Britain's The Spectator, this installment entitled, "Pinch Yourself."
The contrast between, on the one hand, the huge amount of material about Obama’s radical associations that has been published in on-line journals and in a few brave newspapers, and on the other the refusal by big media to address it and to vilify those who do, becomes more astounding by the day.
The Obamaniacs are spinning the relationship between Obama and William Ayers, former of Weather Undergound Terrorism Inc, as of no consequence because this was supposedly a chance acquaintance and because the educational project they worked on, the Annenberg Challenge, was a worthy one.
Stanley Kurtz now nails that canard by showing how, through the Annenberg Challenge, Obama and Ayers channelled funds to extremist anti-American Afrocentric ‘educational’ programmes which were a carbon-copy of the world view of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s black racist mentor who, under pressure, Obama was forced to repudiate. These programmes promoted, amongst other radical ideas, the ‘rites of passage’ philosophy which attempted to create a ‘virtually separate and intensely anti-American black social world’ in order to ‘counter the potentially detrimental effects of a Euro-centrically oriented society.’
One such teacher taught that, ‘The submission to Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy.’
Kurtz concludes:
However he may seek to deny it, all evidence points to the fact that, from his position as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah Wright.
No surprise there, since back in June Kurtz pointed to evidence that Obama shared the black racism of the Trinity United Church of Christ. In this article Obama was reported as rejecting ‘integrationist assimilation’ and wanting to channel black rage more effectively into political organisation.
Kurtz dug out a chapter in a 1990 book called "After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois" in which Obama sketched out how radical black churches could be harnessed to help radicalise the black population. As Kurtz wrote:
So it would appear that Obama’s own writings solve the mystery of why he stayed at Trinity for 20 years. Obama’s long-held and decidedly audacious hope has been to spread Wright’s radical spirit by linking it to a viable, left-leaning political program, with Obama himself at the center. The revolutionizing power of a politically-awakened black church is not some side issue, or merely a personal matter, but has been the signature theme of Obama’s grand political strategy.
You have to pinch yourself – a Marxisant radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is on the verge of becoming President of the United States. And apparently it’s considered impolite to say so.
Fabricated Al-Dura campaign unjustifiably defamed image of Israel and Zionism; worse than that, it has eased West's resistance to Islamization, claims defendant in France2's al-Dura libel case, Mr. Philippe Karsenty in DemoCast.TV exclusive interview.
'Pal-e-gandist' stringers have been duping mainstream-media ("MSM") elites (& the public) for years. That is why the mainstream-media have avoided reporting on and showing the evidence my case released. The film exposes and implicates all of them and calls-into-question their ethics, their supposed objectivity, and their own agendas,' alleges defendant in France2's al-Dura libel case, Mr. Philippe Karsenty.
Was Philippe Karsenty calling France2's Enderlin's edit of al-Durah 'a fraud' a libel? Defendant Karsenty speaks with DemoCast days before the court verdict is rendered on the significance of revealing the Palestinian government's manufactured victimhood to damn Israel, and the media's complicity in perpetuating and disseminating these libels globally - which:
- Vilified Israel, Jews, Zionism and Zionists in the mind of the public; - Created an empathy for Arab-Muslims to welcome their immigration into the West; and - Generated billions of dollars ino embezzlable foreign-aid for Palestinian politicians.
Mr. Karsenty asserts that the mainstream-media ('MSM') has avoided reporting on France2's al-Dura imbroglio because, regardless of the verdict, the evidence has exposed:
1) That ALL global news services have been relying on Palestinian-Muslim journalists in their employ;
2) That their own Palestinian-Muslim journalists, cameramen, and videographers are revealed to be knowingly complicit in reporting what they know to be fraudulent- the PA's fabricating atrocities against Israel;
3) That the France2 Affair is evidence that respected news services, such as news agencies (AP, Reuters, AFP, UPI,), national broadcasters (e.g., BBC, EuroNews members), channels (like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News), networks (e.g., NBC, ABC, CBS) might all be guilty of compromising their integrity by augmenting, embellishing, and globally-disseminating knowngly-fabricated libels against the Jewish state - because it is the Jewish state, thus becoming knowing-accessories in these crimes.
Charles Enderlin's pronounced "slain by IDF" Mohammed al-Dura blatantly peers out from under his arm in subpoenaed, cutting-room footage released-today.
What about the fact that the dead child identified as Mohamed al Dura was brought into the hospital between noon and 1 PM while the alleged shooting occurred at 3PM? Making the motions of someone who turns back a clock, France2 News-director, Madame Arlette Chabot explained there was “some kind of time change that day in Gaza.”
Charles Enderlin depicted the Israeli army 'killing' young 'bystander,' Mohammed al-Durah, according to the video footage he edited. In the 10 seconds of raw footage which continues beyond the point Enderlin brands al-Durah "Dead" (released by France2 News under subpoena by the Philippe Karsenty-libel court) it's obvious that you can see the boy lift his right elbow to peer-out for directions.
Mohammed is neither an innocent, nor a bystander. Neither is the producer, Enderlin, or the ethics of France2TV journalism management. Will the truth prevail in court? The verdict will be returned on May 21, 2008.
An enemy’s ‘center of gravity’ is the necessary but vulnerable precondition of its strength. With respect to Israel, Carl von Clausewitz's ("war is merely the continuation of policy by other means") dictum that in “small states dependent on greater ones," it lies generally in the army of their allies would seem to apply. However, since the army or military power of Israel’s ally, the United States, cannot itself be directly attacked, it must be outflanked by an assault on public opinion”—in a democracy, a force more powerful than armies.
Israel’s ‘center of gravity’ is public opinion in the United States. Hence we need to ask: What is there about American public opinion regarding Israel that endows Israeli government with legitimacy and its ruling elites—politicians and judges, academics and journalists—with respectability? The answer: Israel’s reputation as “the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Anti-Semitism on the Rise in Europe by Dale Hurd, CBN News Senior Reporter, broadcast on The 700 Club, Thursday, 6 March 2008 - and streams on CBN News. DemoCast was credited in this TV news report (see below).
When the judge ordered France2 to turn over all of its footage of the incident, it also showed the boy moving his arms and peering through his fingers after he was supposed to be dead.
But Muslim rage at the original France2 news story led to countless reprisals against Jews around the world. It was even mentioned by terrorists as a reason for the beheading Daniel Pearl.
Scott Jacobs, Editor at DemocracyBroadcastingNews.com, says the France2 story "globally defames the Jewish nation, Israel, with a fabricated icon of hypocritical brutality and immorality; and criminalizes Jews and their State to justify pariah / punishment."
Full article and/or video from ABC Family Channel's "The 700 Club" here.
Prof. Richard Landes, chronicler of the Al Dura Affaire via The Second Draft, is the academic authority on the problem and the ramifications:
"Israelis repeatedly express astonishment at why Jews from the diaspora care about setting this record straight when they just wish it would go away. When they realize how powerful the impact not only on Israel, but on Jews around the world, they express surprise.
As Karsenty later explained to the judges, “The day after al Durah, one of my employees came into the office and challenged me, ‘Look at what your army has done, murdering an innocent child!’” In Brussels, a rabbi was attacked the next day on the way to New Year’s services, never having seen the footage.
That’s the core of the blood libel: a Jew deliberately murders an innocent child, and all Jews everywhere are held responsible. Five days later crowds of immigrant Muslims and European leftists would hold a huge banner aloft in Place de la République with a "Star of David = Swastika = picture of the al Durahs behind the barrel," shouting “Death to Israel! Death to the Jews!”
In related news, 'Ron Hogan on Media Bistro writes a review of philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy who appeared at NY's 92nd Street Y. He weighed in on the ways that anti-semitism has reconfigured itself for the 21st century.
"I am a few months younger than Israel," Lévy quipped at the start of his speech, but he cannot remember any moment in his lifetime when the nation seemed "as lonely, as vulnernable, and as threatened" as it is now, particularly as the anti-semitism that he sees at the root of much anti-Zionist rhetoric has become more openly expressed. "The dikes are broken," he warned, citing the UN conference at Durban and the boycotts being mounted against book fairs in Paris and Turin which have chosen to honor Israel's contributions to world literature.
So what can Jews do against this pernicious worldview?
"Respond blast for blast," Lévy urged, and dismantle this new anti-semitic rhetoric before it coalesces into a political movement with real power. (As he noted, the new anti-semites are openly looking to acquire nuclear weapons, and if they get them, they plan to use them.) He also called upon Jews to strengthen their alliances with other persecuted groups, and to work whatever influence they could muster to ensure that moderate Muslims prevail in that religion's internal struggle with fundamentalism. (He even suggested that the Koran might benefit from the application of Talmudic reading.) And, he noted, "the morale of Israel is at its best," and ready to deal with this threat. "The best defense is attack," he said, citing Clausewitz, "and the best attack is confrontation."
As Europeans continue to downplay the connection betwen the press' systemic libeling of the Jewish State (deconstructed in the case of France2TV's Mohammed-al-Dura libel suit) and the climate of anti-Semitism throughout Europe, the Paris suburb of Bagneux delivers yet another pathetic proof: an anti-Semitic torture crime from the same town that Ilan Hamili was tortured to death in two years ago.
The European Jewish Press reports, "Six youths from the southern Paris suburb of Bagneux, aged 17 to 25, are accused of locking up 19-year-old Mathieu Roumi in a storage room on February 22, beating and sexually tormenting him.
Aged 17 to 25, the six youths -- who knew the victim -- had falsely accused him of stealing from them in order to lure him into a trap, judicial sources said. Once he arrived in the apartment of one of his aggressors, the young man was handcuffed on a radiator and beaten.
With a pen, the aggressors scrawled "dirty Jew" and "dirty faggot" on the face of their victim. Later they forced him to swallow down cigarette butts and to suck a condom on a stick.
The man's ordeal reportedly lasted nine and a half hours. He was later hospitalised "in a state of shock". The Jewish community of Bagneux is comprised of some 100 Jewish families."
Who created the climate for this 'special punishment' of Jews in France? Israel-vilifying at the expense of Palestinian sufferage has been the narrative in European media reporting for years. The Intifada was created by Yasser Arafat in part to publicly damn Israel by creating that image for journalists.
Though the Palestinians were presumed to be provoking these damning events (few, like, Prof. Richard Landes revealed that they were even staging them. But no one believed that the press themselves would actually demand video that was damning - to help the underdog Palestinians by turning the world against Israel (simultaneously feeding their feed their blood-lust against the Jews).
Even the French courts, upon forced examination by Charles Enderlin's libel suit against Philippe Karsenty, wish to reject the Zionists' claim of journalistic conspiracy. But famous ballistics expert, Jean-Claude Schilinger, finds that the Israeli forces could not have killed Mohammed al-Dura. He further finds that there was no evidence that Muhammad was actually even killed, nor his father injured, as reported by Enderlin on France2.
Why is exposing the press' fraud & complicity in the al-Durah case so significant? Is it just because the Palestinian blood-libel results in antipathy towards French Jewish citizens? 1) The case reveals the corruption and complicity of the trusted, objective, journalistic industry- which the public relies upon to deliver truth and reality, instead turning them into agents of propagandized blood-libel; which created a self-perpetuating, media-vilifying against Israel and it's perceived Christian supporters. Charles Enderlin may consider himself Jewish, but he marches to the 'Liberal' Media party cadence; in this case, 'sympathize with the Muslims: victims of natural, villainous, Jewish oppression. Hence, the Europeans eliminate their inherited guilt of their grandparents' having turned-in their Jewish neighbors for torture and genocide because they didn't believe in Jesus as Messiah.' Hence, the world can no longer trust its independent journalistic institutions (AP, AFP, Reuters, and the local news outlets which parrot their stories) to represent objectivity in cases involving 'imperialistic Judeo-Christian America and Israel;
2) It globally defames the Jewish nation, Israel, with a fabricated (seemingly incontrovertible) icon of hypocritical brutality and immorality; and criminalizes Jews (and their State) to justify pariah-punishment from all ethical people;
3) It mollifies the world from challenging Islamic political and social imperialism- whether manifested in:
a) the quest for the cultural and relgious Islamicization of Western societies,
b) the Muslim crusade to 'reconquer' Jerusalem by establishing "a Palestinian State," with Jerusalem as its capital; and even
c) Iran's apocalyptic Mullahs' impending triggering a global nuclear war, seeking to conquer the Islam-rejecting, America, and the State of Israel in the name of Allah the Almighty."
4) The libel verdict against fraud-exposer Philippe Karsenty represents a victory against truth and reason. This portends for ill for Jews during a period when an Islamic-Western oil-axis influences public sentiments about either not offending Muslim sensibilities (fundamentalist oil-price setters, defamation-litigating front-groups like CAIR, MPAC, and MSA or the abundance of Muslim immigrants worshipping in Muslim Brotherhood-extremism-inculcating outposts), or pleasing the West's new bosses - as politcal Islamist equity (thereby influence) permeates throughout Western economies, institutions, and society.
Consequently anti-Semitism in the US is increasingly rabid and spreading. But, as in Nazi Europe leading to World War II, it portends the decline of ethics and reason in society. Islamism is on the march. What is scapegoating for, if not to deny an inconvenient reality?
In a rare self-exposure, CNN was criticized on air by editor of the Jerusalem Report, David Horovitz, who called CNN and the foreign press to task in distorting reporting of Israel vs Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization/Palestinian Authority.
According to Daniel Pipes in the Jerusalem Post, 2 recent polls indicate that given the opportunity, both Israeli Arabs and Palestinians living under the PLO/PA overwhelmingly (82%) prefer to liveunder Jewish, not Palestinian, rule.
As the title of a Globe and Mail news item puts it, "Some Palestinians prefer life in Israel: In East Jerusalem, residents say they would fight a handover to Abbas regime."
The article offers the example of Nabil Gheit, who, with two stints in Israeli prisons and posters of "the martyr Saddam Hussein" over the cash register in his store, would be expected to cheer the prospect of parts of eastern Jerusalem coming under PA control.
Not so. As mukhtar of Ras Khamis, near Shuafat, Gheit dreads the PA and says he and others would fight a handover. "If there was a referendum here, no one would vote to join the Palestinian Authority...There would be another intifada to defend ourselves from the PA."
Two polls released last week, from Keevoon Research, Strategy & Communications and the Arabic-language newspaper As-Sennara, survey representative samples of adult Israeli Arabs on the issue of joining the PA, and they corroborate what Gheit says. Asked, "Would you prefer to be a citizen of Israel or of a new Palestinian state?" 62 percent want to remain Israeli citizens and 14 percent want to join a future Palestinian state. Asked, "Do you support transferring the Triangle [an Arab-dominated area in northern Israel] to the Palestinian Authority?" 78 percent oppose the idea and 18 percent support it.
IGNORING THE don't-knows/refused, the ratios of respondents are nearly identical preferring to stay within Israel - 82 percent and 81 percent, respectively. Gheit exaggerates that "no one" wants to live in the PA, but not by much. Thousands of Palestinian residents in Jerusalem who, fearful of the PA, have applied for Israeli citizenship since Olmert's statement further corroborate his point.
Why such affection for the state that Palestinians famously revile in the media, in scholarship, classrooms, mosques, and international bodies, that they terrorize on a daily basis? Best to let them explain their motivations in direct quotations.
Financial considerations: "I don't want to have any part in the PA. I want the health insurance, the schools, all the things we get by living here," says Ranya Mohammed. "I'll go and live in Israel before I'll stay here and live under the PA, even if it means taking an Israeli passport. I have seen their suffering in the PA. We have a lot of privileges I'm not ready to give up."
Law and order: Gazans, note Israeli-Arab journalists Faiz Abbas and Muhammad Awwad, now "miss the Israelis, since Israel is more merciful than [the Palestinian gunmen] who do not even know why they are fighting and killing one another. It's like organized crime."
Raising children: "I want to live in peace and to raise my children in an orderly school," says Jamil Sanduqa. "I don't want to raise my child on throwing stones, or on Hamas."
A more predictable future: "I want to keep living here with my wife and child without having to worry about our future. That's why I want Israeli citizenship. I don't know what the future holds," says Samar Qassam, 33.
Others raise concerns about corruption, human rights, and even self-esteem ("When the Jews talk about swapping me, it's as though they are denying my right to be a person"). These earnest views do not repudiate the vicious anti-Zionism that reigns in the Middle East, but they reveal that four-fifths of those Palestinians who know Israel at first-hand understand the attractions of a decent life in a decent country, a fact with important and positive implications.
With Arabs representing 1 out of every 5 Israeli citizens, where do the press get the notion that 'Palestinians' seek to be liberated from Israel's governance?
The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for “liberation” organizations. "Abu Ammar,” (Nom de guerre for Yasser Arafat) was built into a Palestinian leader by the KGB in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day Arab-Israeli War.
In that war, Israel humiliated two of the Soviet Union’s most important allies in the Arab world of that time, Egypt and Syria, and the Kremlin thought that Arafat could help repair the Soviet prestige. Arafat had begun his political career as leader of the Palestinian terrorist organization al-Fatah, whose fedayeen were being secretly trained in the Soviet Union. In 1969, the KGB managed to catapult him up as chairman of the PLO executive committee. Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was also a Soviet puppet, publicly proposed the appointment.
Soon after that, the KGB tasked Arafat to declare war on American “imperial-Zionism” during the first summit of the Black International, an organization that was also financed by the KGB. Arafat claimed to have coined the word “imperial-Zionism,” but in fact Moscow had invented this battle cry many years earlier, combining the traditionally Russian anti-Semitism with the new Marxist anti-Americanism.
FP: Why has the American and Israeli leadership been deceived so long about Arafat’s criminal and terrorist activities?
Pacepa: Because Arafat is a master of deceit—and I unfortunately contributed to that. In March 1978, for instance, I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest to involve him in a long-planned Soviet/Romanian disinformation plot. Its goal was to get the United States to establish diplomatic relations with him, by having him pretend to transform the terrorist PLO into a government-in-exile that was willing to renounce terrorism. Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev believed that newly elected US president Jimmy Carter would swallow the bait. Therefore, he told the Romanian dictator that conditions were ripe for introducing Arafat into the White House. Moscow gave Ceausescu the job because by 1978 my boss had become Washington’s most favored tyrant. “The only thing people in the West care about is our leaders,” the KGB chairman said, when he enrolled me in the effort of making Arafat popular in Washington. “The more they come to love them, the better they will like us.”
“But we are a revolution,” Arafat exploded, after Ceausescu explained what the Kremlin wanted from him. “We were born as a revolution, and we should remain an unfettered revolution.” Arafat expostulated that the Palestinians lacked the tradition, unity, and discipline to become a formal state. That statehood was only something for a future generation. That all governments, even Communist ones, were limited by laws and international agreements, and he was not willing to put any laws or other obstacles in the way of the Palestinian struggle to eradicate the state of Israel.
My former boss was able to persuade Arafat into tricking President Carter only by resorting to dialectical materialism, for both were fanatical Stalinists who knew their Marxism by heart. Ceausescu sympathetically agreed that “a war of terror is your only realistic weapon,” but he also told his guest that, if he would transform the PLO into a government-in-exile and would pretend to break with terrorism, the West would shower him with money and glory. “But you have to keep on pretending, over and over,” my boss emphasized.
Ceausescu pointed out that political influence, like dialectical materialism, was built upon the same basic tenet that quantitative accumulation generates qualitative transformation. Both work like cocaine, let’s say. If you sniff it once or twice, it may not change your life. If you use it day after day, though, it will make you into an addict, a different man. That’s the qualitative transformation. And in the shadow of your government-in-exile you can keep as many terrorist groups as you want, as long as they are not publicly connected with your name.
In April 1978 I accompanied Ceausescu to Washington, where he convinced President Jimmy Carter that he could persuade Arafat to transform his PLO into a law-abiding government-in-exile, if the United States would establish official relations with him. Thereupon, President Carter publicly hailed Ceausescu as a “great national and international leader” who had “taken on a role of leadership in the entire international community.”
Three months later I was granted political asylum by the United States, and Romania’s tyrant lost his dream of getting the Nobel Peace Prize. A quarter of a century later, however, Arafat remains in place as the PLO chairman and seems to still be on track with the Kremlin’s game of deception. In 1994, Arafat was granted the Nobel Peace Prize because he agreed to transform his terrorist organization into a kind of government-in-exile (the Palestinian Authority) and pretended, over and over, that he would abolish the articles in the 1964 PLO Covenant that call for the destruction of the state of Israel and would eradicate Palestinian terrorism.
At the end of the 1998-99 Palestinian school year, however, all one hundred and fifty new schoolbooks used by Arafat’s Palestinian Authority described Israel as the “Zionist enemy” and equated Zionism with Nazism. Two years after the Oslo Accords were signed, the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists rose by 73% compared to the two year period preceding the agreement.
The Gloria Center's Barry Rubin penned this must read expose into Reuters News Agency's editorial practices on stories involving the Jewish State of Israel:
...The World Bank annual reports are entitled "Intifada, Closures and Palestinian Economic Crisis." They make the very simple point that the intifada--an armed Palestinian war on Israel--leads to closures and thus the combination brings on a crisis. The reports are quite careful in pointing out all the factors that led to the Palestinian economic decline. They do not say the losses were strictly due to Israeli curbs on movement. On the contrary, the 2003 report for example, written at the height of the violence, says the closures and movement restrictions are pretty insignificant. (see it here).
This specific example of dishonesty matters because the approach we see here--predetermining the story, ignoring most of the factors involved, blaming Israel--sets a pattern for a whole raft-full of stories:
Why is there no peace? Israel doesn't give enough concessions. Often there is no mention of Palestinian hardline positions, behavior in not keeping commitment, terrorism as a key element in the failure to achieve peace. Most important of all, there is endless talk about what Israel can or should give for peace but far less about what the Palestinians must give: end of conflict, full recognition of Israel, return of refugees to a Palestinian state, a real end to incitement and terrorism.
Why is there suffering in Gaza? Israel's restrictions. Far less mention of Hamas hard line, openly genocidal stance, constant aid to terrorist attacks and rocket firing, refusal to meet even minimal international requirements.
Why are Palestinians, to quote the Reuters story, "Deprived of dignity"? No mention of a corrupt government and gangs of gunmen who couldn't care less about their well-being, and a strategy that starts unwinnable wars. It's all Israel's fault.
It is bad enough that this kind of coverage is shaping the way that many in the West see the Middle East. What is really horrible is that these articles are being deliberately written to do so.
These awards apply mostly to biased coverage excusing Islamist imperialism, which media-outlets or their producers/reporters typically rationalize, often by attempting to criminalize the Jewish state of Israel. Here are a couple of well-placed honors, though the entire list is worth reviewing:
Worst Film Editor: Charles Enderlin
In his legal battle over the Mohammed al-Dura video, French media analyst Philippe Karsenty forced France 2 TV to publicly screen for the first time cameraman Talal Abu Rahma's raw, unedited footage.
When the judge asked correspondent Charles Enderlin why only 18 minutes of footage were submitted – instead of an expected 27 minutes – the veteran reporter told the court that when he transferred the images to DVD for the court, he had to manipulate some footage that wasn't relevant for that day. Although a final ruling isn't due till the end of February, the development and the footage discredited the myths of Mohammed al-Dura.
Dishonest Reporter of the Year
This year's Dishonest Reporter voting marks a change for HonestReporting readers. Previous awards went to large, impersonal news services, but not so this year. One journalist made herself such a lightning rod in 2007 she easily defeated BBC and Reuters – the traditional disfavorites.
The results didn't surprise us, but the depth of anger and lingering resentment indicate that readers weren't just outraged by our winner's work; on some level, they were personally offended in a way far exceeding the rest of the MSM’s Mideast coverage this year.
Which is why the 2007 Dishonest Reporting Award goes to Christiane Amanpour, for her in-depth, but tragically flawed CNN special series, God's Warriors.
The series sought to examine Jewish, Muslim and Christian extremism. It's not our intention to address God's Warriors yet again. However, reader criticism can be boiled down to four primary charges. In a nutshell, Amanpour's series:
Equated years-old isolated cases of Jewish extremism with Islamic terror that has killed thousands of people in New York, London, Madrid, Bali, Amman, etc.
Spuriously claimed that fringe elements of world Jewry succeeded in hijacking Israeli and American government policy.
Addressed radical Islam with kid gloves.
Belittled religious belief in general.
Religious extremism is a valid news story and an accurate, honest comparson of the three major monotheistic faiths would undoubtedly have a positive impact on public debate.
Unfortunately, the sense our readers and we have is that Amanpour didn't spend a year researching religious extremism, but rather reinforcing her own world views.
From media watchdog, HonestReporting: Not all cases of slanted reporting are instantly clear. It's often helpful to take a step back and examine a news organization over a long-term period. Subtle elements of bias such as headline or photo selection then become clearer. In our second in-depth media analysis, we studied six months of reporting from the New York Times, one of the most popular and influential newspapers in the world.
The New York Times: April-September 2007 - Summary of Findings:
Balance: Despite an evenly balanced selection of stories on Israel and the Palestinians, the New York Times gave far more weight to Israeli military incidents in text location, headlines and photo selection than to Palestinian attacks. More than 60% of images sympathetic to one side or the other favored the Palestinians.
Consistency: Israeli and Palestinian actions were not treated consistently in choice of language. Israel or the Israel Defense Forces were the subject of strongly worded, direct headlines in 18 out of 20 cases (90%). However, in the 20 cases where the Palestinians were responsible for attacks, the language was mostly passive and the group responsible was only named in eight instances (40%).
Context and Accuracy: Inaccurate statements or important context that would give readers a fuller picture of news events was often omitted. Terms such as "militants", "occupied territory," and "illegal settlements" were used without providing a proper explanation.
Melanie Phillips' coverage of the "27 minutes of hitherto unseen footage of the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah which the court had required France 2 to produce. For readers who are unfamiliar with this scandal, I wrote about it here, here and here. Suffice it to say here that the iconic image of the child Mohammed al Durah, pictured crouching with his father behind a barrel next to a concrete wall in an apparently vain attempt to shelter from the gun-battle between Israel and the Palestinians that was raging around them before he was allegedly shot dead by the Israelis, served to incite terrorist violence and atrocities around the world after it was transmitted by France 2 at the beginning of the second intifada. Yet it is clear to anyone looking at this in detail that the whole thing was staged, not least from the devastating evidence here which shows the boy raising his arm and peeping through his fingers seconds after the France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin said he had been shot dead.
After Philippe Karsenty, founder of the French online media watchdog, Media Ratings, accused France 2 of staging the al Durah ‘killing’ and called for the resignation of both Charles Enderlin and France 2’s News Director, Arlette Chabot, France 2 and Enderlin sued Karsenty for defamation, and won. In a disgraceful piece of judicial cronyism after the gratuitous intervention of the then French President Jacques Chirac, the court decided against Karsenty and in favour of France 2 and Enderlin. Karsenty appealed; the judge ordered France 2 to produce the unscreened footage of this incident; today it did so.
Well, sort of. What it actually produced was 18 minutes out of the 27 it was required to bring forward. From this footage, which according to France 2’s Palestinian cameraman was filmed during an implausible 45 minutes of continuous shooting by Israeli soldiers, there is no evidence that anyone at all was killed or injured -- including Mohammed al Durah who by the end of the frames in which he figured seemed to be still very much alive and unmarked by any wound whatsoever.
The drama of today’s hearing was enhanced by the appearance of Enderlin himself, who until today had not graced this case with his presence. As the film was shown to a packed and overheated (in every sense) courtroom, Enderlin and Karsenty offered rival interpretations of the images on the screen. If Enderlin thought he would thus demonstrate the inadequacy of Karsenty’s case, he was very much mistaken. On the contrary, parts of his commentary were so absurd that the courtroom several times burst into incredulous laughter.
Enderlin offered only a vague, rambling and unconvincing explanation of why he had only produced 18 minutes of footage rather than the 27 he claimed to have received from his cameraman in Gaza (Enderlin himself was not in Gaza when these events occurred). After the hearing Professor Richard Landes, one of the people who had already seen the contested footage, said that two scenes had been cut out which clearly showed that the violence had been staged -- including one in which a Palestinian preparing to throw a missile is suddenly picked up and carried into an ambulance despite showing no signs of injury. This scene, said Landes, was filmed by Reuters, who actually filmed the France 2 cameraman filming it. Yet there was no sign of it today.
What struck me very forcibly about the 18 minutes overall was that, although this was supposed to have been filmed during continuous firing by the Israelis for 45 minutes, much of the footage consisted merely of a violent demonstration by stone throwing youths, many of whom who appeared to be enjoying the exercise. One child was pictured riding a bicycle through the melee. There was no evidence of any of them being killed or injured. From time to time, to be sure, youths were dragged onto stretchers and into ambulances – but there was no sign of anyone actually being shot, no-one falling under fire, no sign of any blood or injuries whatever. The nearest it got to an injury was a sequence in which a young man coyly pulled his shirt open a little to provide a glimpse of a neat red circle on his stomach, which he claimed was a (rubber?) bullet wound. But since he appeared to be in no pain whatever and was grinning throughout his turn for the camera, this seemed an eminently implausible way for someone who had just been hit by gunfire to behave.
There were many very strange things about this footage which just didn’t add up. When it came to the footage of the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah, the following stood out:
* This sequence was not a continuous narrative but was repeatedly broken up and spliced onto footage of other scenes from the demonstration;
* Although the France 2 cameraman had told a German film-maker, Esther Schapira, that he had filmed six minutes of the al Durah father and son under continuous Israeli fire, the footage of them lasted for less than one minute;
* There was a camera tripod next to them;
* There was no evidence of the boy actually being hit;
* At one point, people in the crowd cried out that the boy was dead, while he was sitting up large as life clinging onto his father with his mouth wide open;
* After he was said to be dead, he moved his arm (the sequence I have already reported which has been available on the web for years).
The Appeal Court is not due to give its verdict in this case until next February. As of today, such are the fresh contradictions and questions thrown up by the showing of this footage it would seem that France 2 has painted itself into a corner from which it will find it increasingly hard to escape.
But this scandal goes far beyond France 2. Soon after it transmitted the 55 seconds which showed the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah, it helpfully sent various news agencies three minutes of the footage of this incident – including the frames in which the ‘dead’ child is seen moving, but which of course it had not broadcast. For reasons which invite speculation, not one of these agencies broadcast it either. Had they done so, there would have been no ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah and untold numbers of subsequent deaths would have been avoided.
It is therefore not surprising, but no less shocking, that with a couple of heroic exceptions the mainstream media has until very recently ignored the evidence suggesting that a monumental and deadly fraud was perpetrated here, indicators which have been around for years. As of today, the Karsenty case has been totally ignored by the mainstream French media.
It is also deeply troubling that the Israel government ignored this evidence for seven years, that it is only very recently that its press spokesman Danny Seaman said the incident was staged, and that even now certain representatives of the Israel government are playing a most ambiguous role in defending their country against this modern, blood libel.
The ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah was swallowed uncritically by the western media, despite the manifold unlikeliness and contradictions which were apparent from the start, because it accorded with the murderous prejudice against Israel which is the prism through which the Middle East conflict is habitually refracted. This scandal has the most profound implications not just for the media, not just for the Middle East conflict but for the western world’s relationship to reason, which seems to grow more tenuous by the day.
Prof. Landes and Philippe Karsenty spoke outside the courtroom about the video evidence presented and omitted which confirm "the al-Dura hoax."
Boston University Professor Richard Landes, who has viewed all the original footage of the alleged shooting that day, attended France2 TV News' Charles Enderlin's subpoenaed evidence footage. Coverage from Augean Stables:
"Then we viewed the rushes with a preamble and running commentary by Enderlin, with comments by Karsenty. It was something of a circus. But it did give me an insight into how Enderlin’s mind works. He explained about Sharon’s provocative visit to the Temple Mount on the 28th, and the riots that ensued on the 29th in the West Bank, and how everyone expected the rioting to spread to Gaza the next day, “because that’s how it works.”
And sure enough, when we see the tapes, we see scene after scene of people being evacuated into ambulances. We don’t see them hit, we don’t see their injuries, but we do see them taken to ambulances, and Enderlin explains: “The Israelis are firing with rubber bullets.” Now there’s no evidence that the Israelis are firing. But because Enderlin expects violence, when he sees Palestinians evacuated in ambulances, he concludes that they have been shot by Israelis.
Most of the material was inconclusive or boring, and I patiently waited for the material I’d seen. Then, at about 15 minutes on the time code, Enderlin announces that there will be a break and we will see the final scenes. That’s when I knew he had cut the scenes. Sure enough, the screen went blank, and then began the final three minutes...
Now there are at least two scenes that I remember specifically, one of which we have documented by Reuters. One scene that wasn’t there I described as follows:
At another point, a boy faked a leg injury, but instead of drawing big kids who could pick him up and rush him past the cameramen to an ambulance, he only attracted little kids. He shooed them away, looked around, and, seeing that no one was coming to evacuate him, straightened up and walked away without a limp.
Indeed this scene provoked a snort from the Israeli cameraman working for France2 who was watching the film with me and Enderlin at the time.
When I asked him why, he said, “because it looks so fake.”
“That’s my impression as well,” I responded.
Enderlin commented, “Oh, they do that all the time. It’s their cultural style. They exaggerate.”
“But if they do it all the time, why couldn’t they have staged Al Durah?” I asked.
“Oh, they’re not good enough.”
Now ultimately, this is my (B.U. Prof. Richard Landes') word (and possibly, if they remember and have the courage to come forward, those of Denis Jeambar and Daniel Leconte), against Enderlin.
But the second piece I remember is actually documented by Reuters (video sequence).
Past photographers, among whom we find Talal abu Rahmah, with his France2 equipment.
Talal is in close, for maximum effect. Note the fellow on the far left who’s in for the ride. He’s seen smiling in the video.
And then run back right in front of the Israeli position (where he was presumably shot) and loaded on the ambulance right in front of the Israelis.
Israeli position in the background. No one is afraid of being hit by them.
Pajamas Media Parisian blogger Nidra Poller provides eyewitness commentary to fill in the blanks of Prof. Landes' participation in viewing France2 TV News' Charles Enderlin's subpoenaed 'master' b-roll video evidence presentation at the trial:
"Reading an excerpt from the cameraman’s testimony under oath—”I filmed 27 minutes of the incident that lasted 45 minutes—” the judge asks why there are only 18 minutes on the CD. The seasoned France 2 journalist gives a garbled excuse...
So how did the 27 minutes boil down to 18? Enderlin denies that anyone ever said there were 27 minutes… and then says there was some irrelevant material that he chopped off the day after the incident.
The judge presses the point, asking Rosenzweig and Landes to estimate the duration of the footage they viewed. They both attest to more than 20 minutes… Rosenzweig remembers someone mentioning 27. Karsenty’s lawyer concludes for the record: something is missing.
The raw footage was not so raw. And it was barely al Dura. If we take the cameraman’s word for it, given under oath a few days after the incident, not something but everything is missing. This is supposed to be the raw footage of the al Dura death scene. What we get is raw footage of Palestinian youths throwing stones, firebombs, and burning tires at the Israeli outpost. And provoking no reaction, except for one teargas bomb. Real provocations alternate with those familiar fake battle scenes with instantaneous ambulance evacuations...
As Charles Enderlin switched on his anchorman’s voice and stonewalled, his legal team—Maître Amblard, who has been handling the cases for the past year, reinforced by a tall dashing Maître Pierre Olivier Sur and the scowling Guillaume Weill-Raynal— stood squarely in front of Landes and Rosenzweig, blocking their view of the screen...
Suddenly everything is confused. The timeline skips from 14’20 to 17’00. We see the beginning of the al Dura news report as it was broadcast. The avocat général fiddles with the controls, the image winds back, forward. We’re back at the interview. The commentary is confused. Is Charles Enderlin saying the fire was coming from the Palestinian positions?
Finally—it’s not clear how—we get to the al Dura footage. And all we see is what you got in the original September 30, 2000 broadcast. It’s spliced. But we recognize the details. Karsenty interrupts every few seconds to point out the anomalies. No blood. The boy is holding a red kerchief to make it look like blood. The soldiers were supposed to be firing at them for 45 minutes, the wall is intact, there are a few holes. Round holes, shot head on.
Charles Enderlin and Talal Abu Rahma have consistently claimed that the Israeli position was directly opposite the targeted man and boy. It is not true. Enderlin stands in front of the judge and says everything and the opposite about the positions. He does not reply to a single objection raised by Karsenty, raised by other analysts repeatedly over the past seven years: The father’s arm is intact, he claims he was hit nine times by high power bullets, his muscles smashed, his bones crushed. No blood on his white t-shirt. Voices in Arabic shout “the boy is dead! the boy is dead!” He is sitting next to his father, eyes wide open.
Charles Enderlin standing in a French court explains: Oh, that’s something cultural. In their culture, when they say “the boy is dead” they mean he is in danger of dying, that he is in a very dangerous situation, he might die. The judges smile.
We reach the end of the scene as it figured in news reports, the point where Charles Enderlin said, “Mohamed is dead, his father is critically wounded.” We might ask what that means in his culture…because the scene continues for another three seconds in which we see the boy who is lying on his stomach with his hands over his eyes, turn, lift his elbow, shade his eyes, look at the camera, and slowly return to his prone position.
Philippe Karsenty interrupts every few seconds, leaps up, points to the screen, asks for a slow forward, backward, forward. The boy is moving. He is alive."
On the eve of the annual, global broadcast media association's NewsXchange conference, a look into the international, anti-Americanist culture which influences the tone of global newsreporting vis a vis America and Israel.
The Center for New American Media Presents: "The Anti Americans- A Love/Hate Relationship". A film by Louis Alvarez, Andrew Kolker, Peter Odabashian. Linked courtesy German Ray Drake's 'David's Media Critique'
One theory presented is, like anti-Semitism, it's 'ressentiment.' Wikipedia defines 'Ressentiment' as a sense of resentment and hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, an assignation of blame for one's frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration. The ego creates an enemy, to insulate itself from culpability.
Lacking enforceable penalty (social, legal, or physical) for publicly expressing such denigration, such condemnations flourish.
"KillHim.Nu" (i.e, Pres. Bush) is a jihadi-esque pop-music video from Norway which encourages Europeans to hate American culture and take-up arms.
"...In contrast to the huge focus on the so-called "Israel Lobby" in "God's Jewish Warriors," in "God's Muslim Warriors," Amanpour doesn't mention the powerful Oil Lobby operating in America and advocating for Muslim, Arab and Palestinian perspectives. She doesn't highlight any of the numerous activist Muslim/Arab organizations that lobby and propagandize to influence American public opinion and foreign policy.
Related to this is the minimal discussion or outright omission of several key factors in the rise of Islamist extremism and increased support for terror:
• Thousands of Saudi-funded mosques and schools built worldwide, including many in the U.S., that spread an extreme supremacist form of Islam. Saudi Arabia has also funded extremist training for those who want to work as Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military and the U.S. prison system.
• Saudi-funded Middle East Studies chairs and departments in universities all over the world, including the U.S. • Saudi-funded organizations whose goal is to provide American elementary, middle and high schools with slanted curricula and books about the history of the Middle East and Islam
• Saudi-funded student activists and organizations that indoctrinate and propagandize against Israel, the U.S. and for extreme Islamist causes.
• Extremist websites, online videos, and satellite TV networks that foster Muslim supremacist values and support for terrorism among Muslims across the globe.
Instead of examining any of the above reasons for the spread of Muslim extremism, Amanpour includes two highly questionable explanations: reactions to alleged Israeli brutality and feelings of hopelessness. She commendably does mention repressive Arab/Muslim governments as a factor, but doesn't note how these same governments often intentionally use propaganda to fan the flames of hatred for Israel and the West to deflect attention away from their repressive regimes."
Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is the Chairman of the Board of Fellows of one of Israel's leading think tanks, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
He has devised a new project which exposes how much of the world's media present Israel and the Middle East conflict in a negative light.
His project reveals that the same filters applied to foreign reportage about any ordinary country (in this case, Holland) would create a similarly negative public impression.
Jamie Glazov interviews Dr. Gerstenfeld in Frontpage Magazine.com's "Distorting Israel."
"Trevor Asserson, (is) a leading British litigation lawyer. He has undertaken a number of well documented studies which detail the BBC’s systematic bias against Israel. This is particularly important because the BBC is probably Europe’s most influential media and as Asserson has outlined, a major distorter of information on Israel. The credibility of Asserson’s work has recently increased even further. In past months, the BBC’s manipulations have been exposed in many other fields. This forced them to suspend several employees and inter alia, to apologize both to the British Queen and Prime Minister Gordon Brown. ...
To cover the entire field of anti-Israel media bias is a mission impossible. The methods are almost infinite and vary from crude to subtle ones. There is also a cumulative effect of such distortion. Therefore paradigmatic pilot studies of systematic bias are so important.
Asserson has done that remarkably by investigating such an important media as the BBC. I understood that even better when I interviewed him for one of my books Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss?
Asserson listed in great detail how the BBC regularly in its reporting on Israel, broke many of the 15 legal obligations it is committed to under its monopolistic charter. These include that the media has to be fair, respect the truth, should not broadcast its own opinions on current affairs or current policy, ensure that opposing views are not misrepresented and not let the audience gauge the reporter’s personal views. He listed hundreds of examples of breaking these rules. The list is far too long to be exposed here.
To mention one, there was a huge contrast in how the BBC reported on the British soldiers in Iraq, who were described in warm and glorified terms, whereas Israeli troops were painted as faceless, ruthless and brutal killers.
There are hundreds of ways to be unfair in one’s reporting. One of the most powerful is omission of crucial facts and context of certain actions. If one starts from the false assumption that Israel, through an aggressive war, has conquered Arab territories in 1967 while omitting the genocidal statements against Jews of Palestinian Arab leaders since about 1930, the non-acceptance of the Arabs to create a second Palestinian state in addition to Jordan in 1948 and also ignores the genocidal Arab invasion of the former Palestinian Mandate territory in 1948, one has laid in a simple way the infrastructure for diabolizing Israel.
"Some claim that while the June 1967 war was a military loss, the spirit of armed resistance endured. They believe that resistance is still the strategic choice of Arabs. We have seen the results of the strategic choice of violent resistance by Hamas: an ugly Israeli barrier depriving Palestinians of ever more land that has made their lives even grimmer. The slogans of resistance may incite support, but the consequences of these very slogans cannot be accepted by the Arab public. No one in the Arab world today would accept that Hamas' actions were a large part responsible for the Israeli barrier. There has not been and nor will there be independent assessment of Hamas' strategy. Slogans continue to trump the actual results of actions. "The same strategic manipulation of public opinion can be seen in Hizbullah's 'victory' against Israel in summer 2006. But what was this victory? A victory that left around 1,200 Lebanese dead, led to billions of dollars in damages and losses in tourism income, and the entry of United Nations troops in Southern Lebanon? With such a balance sheet, how could Hizbullah and its Arab supporters mislead the Arab public and claim victory?
Was any inquiry made? Where is the independent commission that studied Hizbullah's actions? Yes, the party's secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, was left standing, just as Abdel-Nasser was. But is that enough when their nations and people were left battered?
Harvard Professor Marvin Kalb's interview on Israel Broadcast Authority. He exposes how Hezbollah fabricates news and manipulates the global media (& public opinion) by victimizing Arabs and vilifying to create an 'inversion of reality.'
More about "The Big Lie" referenced previously. How can facts overcome misguided feelings? Here is a factual history of the Arab-Israeli conflict - to help undo the damage of this week's Channel Four's "Battle for the Holy Land" series. Melanie Phillips provides a concise history of Israel and the Disputed Territories (sometimes today referred to as "Palestine").
Channel Four promotion: "As the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War approaches, what prospects are there for peace, justice and coexistence in Israel and Palestine?"
Melanie Phillips and Carol Gould challenge the intent of the broadcasters and the producers and help us understand the mis-truths (malevolences) which underlie their premises:
Ms. Phillips writes:
"The first core myth that Israel is the artificial creation of Holocaust guilt which displaced the rightful Arab owners of Palestine by European Jews. This is totally untrue. The Jewish nation ruled what later became known as Palestine for hundreds of years — almost two millennia before Islam was even invented in the seventh century and the Arabs invaded. And subsequently, during the long centuries of occupation, the Jews retained an unbroken presence in the land.
This recognition was fundamental to the Balfour Declaration in 1917 which committed the British to re-establishing the Jewish national home in Palestine. The British government’s 1922 White Paper on Palestine made the point that Jewish rights in Palestine were not a gift from anyone:
[I]n order that [Palestine’s Jewish] community should have the best prospect of free development and provide a full opportunity for the Jewish people to display its capacities, it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance. That is the reason why it is necessary that the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine should be internationally guaranteed, and that it should be formally recognised to rest upon ancient historic connection.
The fact is that there never was an independent state of Palestine. Judea was renamed Palestine when the Romans conquered it to erase its Jewish history. And the period of Arab rule was actually very short, lasting less than one century. During the following centuries Palestine was under protracted periods of Islamic rule, largely through the Turkish or Byzantine empire which was brought to an end when the Turks were defeated in the First World War. But from the time the Jews of Judea were conquered and exiled, apart from the Jews who remained in Palestine the non-Jews who lived there — who we are told were the ancestors of the Palestinian Arabs who were displaced in 1948 after 1000 years of rule — were actually descended from Latins, Balkans, Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, Turks, Armenians, Italians, Persians, Kurds, Germans, Afghans Circassians, Bosnians, Sudanese, Algerians, Tartars, Danes, Russians, Nubians. Oh, and Arabs. The only nation for which Palestine was the historic national home was actually the Jews.
Even under the Mandate, the Arabs in Palestine did not regard themselves as a people seeking nationhood at all. Very few were there before the Jews arrived. The Palestine Royal Commission reported in 1913 that on the road from Gaza to the north, ‘no orange groves orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached Yabna [a Jewish village]… the western part towards the sea was almost a desert… The villages in this area were few and thinly populated’. Sherif Hussein, the guardian of holy places in Arabia, wrote: ‘The resources if the country are still virgin soil and will be developed by the Jewish immigrants’.
Many Arabs moved to Palestine on the back of the prosperity brought by the returning Jews during the first half of the 20th century. Between 1922 and 1947, the Arab population in Palestine rose by 120 per cent. And they regarded themselves as mainly Syrian. In 1937, the Peel Commission found that the Palestinian Arabs and their kinsmen in Syria ‘clung to the principle that Palestine was part of Syria and should never have been cut off from it’.
The idea that the Jews kicked out the indigenous Arabs was also a myth. The Jews bought most of the land from the Arabs —mainly absentee Arab landlords — as many Arab sources have testified, such as King Abdullah of Transjordan, who wrote that the Arabs were ‘as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping’.
The second great myth of injustice is that the Jews drove out the Arabs when Israel was created in 1948. But the evidence is that most of them fled because they were told to do so by the Arab world. Various Arab newspapers excoriated those who were abandoning their houses and businesses. Syria’s Primer Minister after 1948, Khaled al Azm, wrote in his memoirs: ‘Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees. whileit was we who made them leave…We brought disaster upon the refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave…We have rendered them dispossessed…’ The Economist, never a friend of Israel, reported that the most potent factors for the Arabs’ flight were ‘the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive urging the Arabs to quit…It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades’.
Only very recently a columnist in the Palestinian Authority’s official paper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, acknowledged the same thing. The columnist, Mahmud Al-Habbash, wrote that in 1948, Palestinian Arabs left their homes willingly under the instruction of their own Arab leaders and their false promises of a prompt return. And if we’re talking refugees, there were more Jewish refugees from Arab lands than Arabs who fled Israel. Far from being a European imposition, half of Israel’s population came from the Arab world where an estimated 800,000 were forced out during that period alone, almost double the number of 472,000 Arabs who fled Palestine, according to figures from the UN Mediator on Palestine.
In 1946 the British politician Richard Crossman, who served on the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry Regarding the Problems of European Jewry and Palestine, wrote in his book Palestine Mission: ‘Looking at the position of the Palestinian Arab, I have to admit that no western colonist in any other country had done so little harm, or disturbed so little the life of the indigenous people’.
The next great myth of injustice is that Israel has stopped the Palestinians from having their own state. We are about to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, from which come all the allegations of the illegal occupation of the disputed territories. We will celebrate the triumph, and indeed the miracle, of that war. But many of us don’t even fully appreciate that the Jewish presence in these territories is entirely legal and indeed just. That doesn’t mean it is desirable — but that’s a quite different matter.
The first thing to note about this myth is that the Jews have always accepted two states in Palestine. A Palestinian Arab state was on offer in 1937, 1948 and 2000, but the Arabs always refused it and chose to try to destroy Israel instead. It’s also important to realise that two states were indeed established. In1920, Britain was given a mandate by the League of Nations to establish a Jewish national home within Palestine. At that time, Palestine included what is now Jordan. One year later Winston Churchill gave almost 80 per cent of Palestine away to King Abdullah to form what is now Jordan. Jordan is, in fact, east Palestine. So when the Palestinian Arabs say they are being expected to accept a tiny fraction of what is rightfully their, this is a deep distortion of history.
It was the Jews who were forced to accept a tiny fraction of what was rightfully theirs. The Palestinians were given their state. The problem is that they never wanted the Jews to have theirs.
Moreover, Article 25 of the Mandate emphasised that it extended both west and east of the Jordan River: ‘in the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine.’ In other words, the ‘occupied territories’ actually form part of the original land of Palestine within which the British were enjoined to establish the Jewish national home. And rightly so — after all places like Hebron are part of our ancient and sacred history. These territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza were indeed illegally occupied — but by Jordan and Egypt, between 1948 and 1967. To repeat: I am not suggesting that Israel should retain Judea and Samaria. Indeed, I think it should not. But it is very important to point out that the Jews are entitled to them, according to both law and history, and that the great injustice was done to us.
It is claimed that the Israeli ‘occupation’ is illegal. But it is not. It is legal, not least because Jewish rights theredo not derive from Israel’s capture of the territories in 1967. They derive from the Mandate.
This secured Jewish rights to a homeland and to ‘close settlement’ in Palestine. In doing so, it did not distinguish between Judea and Samaria and the rest of western Palestine. Nothing since that time has abrogated those terms for territories that have not yet come under the sovereignty of any state. Those rights did not expire upon the demise of the League of Nations or the creation of the United Nations. Article 80 of the UN, Charter expressly preserves such ‘rights of peoples’ as existed under League mandates.
Eugene V Rostow, who as undersecretary of state during the Johnson administration helped draft the famous UN Security Council Resolution 242 after the 1967 war, has written that Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip constitute portions of the Palestine Mandate trust territory that have not yet been allocated to a sovereign.
Rostow, a former dean of Yale Law School, concludes that the Mandate remains in force for those regions. Similarly, contrary to the refrain of various United Nations resolutions, the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention does not render Jewish settlement in these territories unlawful because these territories have never been lawfully part of a sovereign state.
Resolution 242 itself, which states the general principles on which ‘a just and lasting peace in the Middle East’ should be established, leaves the issue of territorial rights open for resolution by agreement among the parties. By stressing the importance of security, highlighting the right of all states to live ‘within secure and recognized boundaries’ and refraining from calling for withdrawal from all the newly acquired territories, Resolution 242 envisions that peace talks will produce borders different from the 1949 armistice lines. If the Security Council had intended that Israel withdraw its forces to a definite line, it could have said so.
We are told repeatedly that Israel is behaving illegally and that it must observe international law. So we should insist that the legal demarcations of the (British) Mandate which have never been rescinded should be recognised and upheld. It is not enough for us to say that Israel was attacked in 1967 and won a famous victory, because it is its behaviour since then that has been called into question. So to defend Israel, we must remind people of this history and this law. We have allowed the running to be made by people who misrepresent both.
There are those who believe that making such facts better known is a waste of time because the vilification of Israel is a prejudice which is not susceptible to reason. Call me an incorrigible optimist (!) but I beg to differ. Much of this madness is based on profound ignorance, which in turn has been fed by an equally profound evil.It is perfectly possible for decent people to be misled into believing indecent things.Only when people are taught the truth will the big lie finally be nailed."
(Editor's note") Now that broadcasted (damning) damage has been done, how much retraction or re-correction programming will the Ch 4 and other broadcasters produce and air to replace the innacurate, anti-Israel/Semitic attitudes already generated from these airings? How effective will that 'campaign' be in reversing mis-perceptions?
