Israeli cartoon shames biased Foreign Press Assoc reportage, eliciting grumbles

By William Booth in Washington Post 6/15/2015 

Israel’s Foreign Ministry released an animated short video Monday that mocks foreign journalists who covered last summer's war in the Gaza Strip. The hacks are portrayed -- horrors -- as clueless.

The short clip, produced in-house by the ministry, was prominently featured Monday on the home page of the diplomatic service.

Israel Foreign Press Assoc photographers (Photo:JNS.org)

The release of the cartoon by the government comes a day after Israel issued a broad defense of how the country waged the war in the Gaza Strip last summer, making a case that Israel sought to minimize civilian casualties as the Islamist movement Hamas put its people in the line of fire and cynically used the ensuing death and destruction to stoke anti-Israel propaganda.

The Times of Israel reports that the clip drew a harsh condemnation from the Foreign Press Association in Israel.

The Foreign Press Association in Israel said that it was “surprised and alarmed” by the clip “mocking the foreign media’s coverage of last year’s war in Gaza.

“At a time when Israel has serious issues to deal with in Iran and Syria, it is disconcerting that the ministry would spend its time producing a 50-second video that attempts to ridicule journalists reporting on a conflict in which 2,100 Palestinians and 72 Israelis were killed,” the FPA said in a statement Monday.

“Israel’s diplomatic corps wants to be taken seriously in the world. Posting misleading and poorly conceived videos on YouTube is inappropriate, unhelpful and undermines the ministry, which says it respects the foreign press and its freedom to work in Gaza,” the statement said.




But the Foreign Ministry said the cartoon should be taken as a lighthearted jab.

“The film mocks many journalists with a gentle wink, too many of whom are blind to what is happening around them,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon told reporter Noga Tarnopolsky.

Quite a few journalists who were in Gaza did not report the rocket fire in residential areas in proximity of public buildings. Only after the operation and after leaving Gaza were these materials released and was real information about what they saw revealed.

“Thus, these journalists admitted they did not report what they saw. What is the reason for this? Fear of Hamas? A lack of willingness to tell the truth?” he added, according to Tarnopolsky, who quoted the statement in a series of tweets Monday evening.

Video: Turkish aggressors arming to kidnap Israeli navy-men- new photos; YouTube-banned Israeli satirists bounce-back with new video: The "Peace Activists'" Heroic Fight

YouTube's wrongly-banned LatmaTV rebounds with a sketch about fictional Flotilla "peace activist", Kenneth O'Keefe, sharing the story of his heroic 1-against-27 fight against the blockade-enforcing Israeli sailors.

In reality, the Turkish militants aboard the Mavi-Marmara beat and kidnapped the boarding Israeli sailors. See video:

These real-life videos (see link) shows the terrorists preparations for battle against the Israelis. Courtesy  Terrorism-Info.org.il

1. This video file contains a number of clips documenting the stages of the hard core of IHH operatives aboard the Mavi Marmara preparing themselves for the violent confrontation with the IDF. Some of the videos were taken by the ship’s security cameras (close to the time of the confrontation IHH operatives disabled some 20 security cameras on the upper deck) and others were taken by media correspondents or photographers on board who documented the events.

2. The videos illustrate the intensive preparations made for the confrontation, which began immediately after the Israeli Navy hailed the ships and asked them to return to their home ports. At that point all the ordinary passengers were sent below decks while all the operatives of the hard core mounted the upper deck and began preparations for the confrontation (statements to that effect were also reported when passengers and crew members were questioned).

3. The videos show some of the preparations:

A. Dividing the operatives into avtion teams: Every team was briefed by a senior operative. During the briefings one leader is heard listening to orders (in Turkish) on his walkie-talkie and repeating them to his team. He orders, “Don’t move from here.”

B. Cutting chains and iron bars from the ship’s railings using disks brought on board in Istanbul. The lengths of chains and bars were used to attack the IDF forces.

C. Removing wooden clubs from their hiding places on the ship and distributing them to the operatives.

D. Putting on gas masks and handing out filters.

E. Gathering the operatives on the upper deck, facing the sea. The operatives are armed with clubs to meet the IDF forces.

4. When the first soldier landed on board the ship he and those following him were viciously attacked by the IHH operatives who used the weapons they had prepared in advance, to the point of trying to kill the soldiers.

N.Y. Post, denied access by Obama, can only speculate about "changes" in "Obama 2012: His Triumphs Abroad"

by Ralph Peters, New York Post, November 1, 2008

Looking back on the four years of his first administration, President Obama can be proud: He made the US welcome among the family of nations again; he reduced our reliance on military force; and he gave us peace by reaching sensible accommodations with our enemies.

The lies told about him in the 2008 election were exposed as sheer bigotry. Far from being "soft on radical Islam," President Obama was the first world leader to welcome Jewish refugees after Iran's nuclear destruction of Israel's major cities (his only caveat - a fair one - was the refusal to accept Zionist military officers and their families, in light of Israel's excessive retaliation).

He also demonstrated his resolve in the face of extremism when he overruled the obstructionist advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ordered our military to cross the border into Pakistan in force. The subsequent debacle, as Pakistan cut off supply routes to Afghanistan and threatened a nuclear response, was entirely the fault of our generals on the ground, not of the administration.

Fortunately, President Obama's willingness to talk to our enemies rescued the situation. After laying down their arms, our troops were allowed to evacuate Pakistan and Afghanistan in peace. The Taliban's return to power in Kabul did not result in an excessive bloodbath, and al Qaeda is not permitted the unrestricted freedom it enjoyed in the country prior to 2001.

State Department surveys prove that the Afghan population welcomes Sharia law, the closure of girls' schools and other such cultural choices. Our reparations payments to Kabul (as with those to Havana) are only just. Opium production is, arguably, no worse than in the past.

We also have seen peace in Iraq. Claims that our troop withdrawal was responsible for the resurgence of al Qaeda and the subsequent civil war are nothing but Republican campaign propaganda. With the International Sunni Alliance in firm control of Iraq - after Israel's wanton destruction of Iran - order prevails in the streets. As for the Turkish and Arab suppression of the Kurds, our diplomats regard it as a small price to pay for regional stability. Biased reports of massacres and concentration camps remain unsubstantiated.

Our relations with the Muslim world have rarely, if ever, been better. The current $320 per barrel price of oil allows long-oppressed states to develop themselves without the yoke of neo-colonialism or invasive efforts to force democracy upon their populations. As UN Ambassador Ayers noted, "We can state with pride that the US not only respects, but embraces cultural differences."

Relations with Russia are also at a high unthinkable a mere four years ago. Moscow's legitimate concerns for the welfare of its citizens in the "near abroad," as well as for ethnic Russians persecuted by so-called free democracies, fully justified its peace-preservation military deployments into Ukraine and other regional states. The subsequent referendums on re-unification with Russia, while displaying a few inevitable irregularities, have been judged free and fair by the Jimmy Carter Memorial Foundation.

While the deployment of Russian forces into the NATO-member Baltic states to protect ethnic Russians proved controversial, President Obama's personal intervention kept us - and NATO - out of war. Partisan charges of "Finlandization" distort the generous terms of the neutrality guarantees Moscow provides for the former NATO members.

After the internationally brokered (with President Obama in the lead) demilitarization of eastern Poland, it's clear to all responsible parties that Russia's legitimate claims have been fully satisfied and we may expect peace in our time.

President Obama resisted yet another war trap as China lost patience and finally reclaimed its long-lost province, Taiwan. Furthermore, the reduction of the US military presence in Japan and South Korea has deflated strategic tensions in East Asia to the lowest level in over one hundred years. Again, President Obama gave us peace.

(The resulting peace dividend from our president's 25% cut in the defense budget has allowed our government, in a public/private partnership with the Chicago-based Rezko Foundation, to provide subsidized housing for almost six million new immigrant families from developing countries. No other administration policy has raised the world's esteem for us more profoundly than our "Global Balance" instant-citizenship immigration reforms.)

In our own hemisphere, President Obama has supported the cause of justice, human rights and trade unions, cutting off military aid to Colombia, killing the proposed free-trade agreement with that country, and expressing humane understanding for the long freedom struggle of the FARC and other liberation groups.

Preferring a sensible rapprochement with Venezuela to needless confrontation, our president went to Caracas and negotiated a regional division of labor with democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez. The end of our destructive trade embargo against Cuba, our formal apology for the deprivations we imposed, and our generous reparations payments have inaugurated a new era of friendship with our long-suffering neighbors to the south.

The only complaint Democratic Party cadres fairly may lodge against the Obama administration's foreign policy is that we still have not fully opened our border with Mexico. Resistance among right-wing fanatics in Washington and bigots around the country remains too strong for now.

As for Mexico's presidential contest, President Obama has made it clear that, while he would prefer that a reputed drug-cartel leader not be elected, the US will respect the will of the Mexican people and strive for good relations with any future Mexican government.

One can only ask how much higher our 16.2% unemployment rate - an obvious legacy of the Bush years - might be if President Obama had not restored America's standing in the world and re-negotiated unfair trade treaties imposed on American workers by previous administrations.

As our president remarked just the other day in a re-election campaign speech in Dearborn, Michigan: "Wealth redistribution isn't just an American issue - it's a global issue. Better that Americans should be a little poorer, if that means our brothers in Egypt and Bolivia can become a little richer."

Under President Obama, America's back!

Ralph Peters' most recent book is, "Barack Obama: Too Great To Be A Mere Messiah?" (Fairness Doctrine Press, Limited, Chicago, July 2012)

"An American Carol" (the film that 'liberal Hollywood' red-lit) finally wide-released

Despite their successful track-record for originating Hollywood hits, David Zucker, Myrna Sokoloff, and Lewis Friedman, the Jewish writers of An American Carol, were rejected for production and distribution deals in ('Jewish-controlled?') Hollywood for their conservative parody of The Left.

The trio had to write, finance, and produce the nationalistic comedy all themselves. An American Carol was rejected by all American distributors until Vivendi, a French-owned company, agreed to deal.

The final hurdle- to try to get impartial reviews from a conventionally liberally-biased world of film critics. Today, they got one from the widely syndicated Associated Press' Derrik J. Lang:

'An American Carol' lampoons the left

Opening Friday, "An American Carol" mixes the narrative of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" with Fox News fodder. Leslie Nielsen narrates the tale about Scoorge-ish director Malone stumbling through political-tinted fantasy sequences. A slap-happy General George S. Patton (played by Kelsey Grammer) serves as Malone's patriotic ghost of politics past.

It's a movie genre you don't hear much about in Hollywood: the right-wing comedy. For that matter, it's not much of a genre at all.

But it's exactly what conservative producer-director-screenwriter David Zucker created with "An American Carol." The gag-filled liberal lampoon stars Kevin Farley, brother of the late Chris Farley, as a scruffy Michael Moore clone named Michael Malone, an infamous documentary filmmaker leading a slapstick campaign to abolish the Fourth of July.

"I didn't tell anyone, not even my brother John, I had this part," said Farley, sitting in a conference room chair across from Zucker at Vivendi Entertainment, the film's distributor. "We wanted to keep it close to the vest. Meanwhile, I'm growing a beard and getting fatter. I had just gone through a divorce, and my brother was like, 'You need help!'"

Keeping mum is something both Farley and Zucker said they're accustomed to: In left-leaning Hollywood, conservative political inclinations aren't popular. In fact, when they first met about the role — Zucker said Larry the Cable Guy and Frank Caliendo were also considered — Farley wasn't sure if the veteran director knew he was a Republican.

"I think I've always been on the right side of things," said Farley. "I had a dad that was an influence on me. He was part of the Young Republicans at Georgetown University. He then ran for several public offices in Madison, Wisconsin, which is a bastion of left-wing politics. I grew up in the middle of that, so I'm used to being a fish out of water."

Zucker, who has made over $20,000 in contributions to Democrats over the years, turned to the right later in life.

"It happened gradually for me," said Zucker, director of the original "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun" films. "After 9-11, I saw the reactions of both parties. The Democrats were saying, 'How is this our fault? How are we to blame for this?' And the Republicans were saying, 'This is pure evil, and we need to fight this now.' It made me rethink things."

Zucker acknowledges the release of "An American Carol" is timed to the election, when politics is a hot topic, but he doubts the spoof, which features cameos from the likes of Bill O'Reilly, James Woods, Jon Voight and — believe it — Paris Hilton, has the power to influence voters. His intention is to inspire laughs, not change political perspectives.

"I'm always looking for new targets," said Zucker. "In this town, you're only as good as your last target. First, it was disaster movies with 'Airplane!' Then, it was 'Dirty Harry' with 'The Naked Gun.' And then it was horror movies that were silly with the 'Scary Movie' films. Here, we're finally taking on the excesses of the far left in politics."

Opening Friday, "An American Carol" mixes the narrative of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" with Fox News fodder. Leslie Nielsen narrates the tale about Scoorge-ish director Malone stumbling through political-tinted fantasy sequences. A slap-happy General George S. Patton (played by Kelsey Grammer) serves as Malone's patriotic ghost of politics past.

Because the movie was filmed months ago, audiences won't see timely jabs about the election, although a mention of the Democratic presidental nominee almost made the cut. In what Zucker said might be the film's most controversial scene, Malone travels to a world where President Abraham Lincoln didn't fight the Civil War and slavery was never abolished.

In the version of the film screened for this story, Gary Coleman camoed in said scene as a car-washing plantation slave who calls out to an off-camera colleague named Barack. When asked about the reference, Zucker, who co-wrote the film with Myrna Sokoloff and Lewis Friedman, revealed it will be left on the cutting room floor.

"It was the one thing I didn't think I could defend," said Zucker. "It's because of certain things that I know about Barack Obama. I would have left it in if he had really believed war was not the answer, but I've read that he said he was only against the Iraq war and he supports the Afghanistan war, unlike Michael Moore, who says he's against all wars."

Moore is hardly alone in the film's crosshairs. "An American Carol" roasts jihadists, Rosie O'Donnell, college professors, Neville Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, President Jimmy Carter and chanting protesters. One over-the-top sequence finds Malone alongside a judge (Dennis Hopper) fending off a horde of undead American Civil Liberties Union lawyers.

"The intent is not to make people angry," said Zucker. "To get laughs, you have to deal with outrage. You can't be mild in comedy. In movies where I've been mild, they haven't been successful. You can be mild on television, but to get people out of their houses and into a movie theater, you have to do something they haven't seen before."

US Presidential candidates to atone for Hebrew New Year

The US Presidential candidates set an example of seeking atonement for the Hebrew New Year. (Cartoon by JewishRobot.com for Birthright Israel).
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