Flunking Its Own Quiz on Palestinians at the Christian Science Monitor

...Schindler, the quiz's author, is a young journalist, a Brown University student majoring in Middle East studies who is working as a news intern at The Monitor's web desk. Hopefully, The Christian Science Monitor's editorial oversight extends even to interns writing quizzes writing for the web desk.

Tamar Sternthal..
CAMERA Media Analyses..
10 September '14..



Quizzes and "Things to Know" lists can be a light, fun way for major news sites to present information. They can also be a source of gross misinformation.

The latest example is a July 10, 2014 Christian Science Monitor quiz, still online, entitled "How much do you know about the Palestinians? Take our quiz."

Given the number of factual errors and distortions in the quiz, the question "How much do you know about the Palestinians?" is one that quiz creator Max Schindler might want to ask himself.

(Continue)

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Murder as an Afterthought at the Christian Science Monitor

..Since when was cold-blooded murder the act of a convicted political prisoner? By downplaying and marginalizing Asakreh’s heinous crime and implying that he was imprisoned for his political beliefs, the Christian Science Monitor has succeeded in legitimizing Palestinian terrorism against innocent civilians as if it were acceptable.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
02 April '14..




UPDATE

Following the publication of this communique, the Christian Science Monitor removed the word “political” to describe Asakreh and added the following:

Editor’s note: This sentence has been revised to correctly reflect Asakreh’s status.

One HonestReporting reader also received a response from Christa Case Bryant, the journalist who wrote the piece. She admitted the error, which was due to a mistake in the first draft of the story and not fixed before it was filed. Credit to Christa Case Bryant for taking prompt action to correct the error.

With the topic of Palestinian prisoner releases making news, the Christian Science Monitor profiles Khaled Asakreh, released in the last prisoner release several months ago. We hear about his

gleaming new home, courtesy of the Palestinian Authority’s strong financial support for prisoners. He has two TVs and four rooms of brand-new furniture all to himself, accompanied only by half a dozen plaques commemorating the 22 years he spent in prison. Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian fighter turned peacemaker, gazes out from one in the dining room.

We learn that he is soon to be married. The puff piece continues to focus on Asakreh’s rebuilding of his life and some of the hardships he faced while in prison. What we don’t learn until the very end is that he is a convicted murderer.

Asakreh is described as:

the first political prisoner from the area to be released by Israel in the past year.

So what did this “political prisoner” do to deserve 22 years in an Israeli prison?

Deterred? The Christian Science Monitor and the Gaza Book Libel

Ruqaya Izzidien

Tamar Sternthal..
CAMERA Media Analyses..
26 July '12..

The Christian Science Monitor will not be deterred. While most media outlets have sensibly moved on from the Gaza blockade story, given that Israel now allows in virtually everything aside from weapons, the CSM presses on with the overreported, frequently misreported, and now, anachronistic, story. Ruqaya Izzidien, who earlier displayed her talents in the English Web site of the Muslim Brotherhood, debuts in the CSM with her piece "Under Israeli blockade of Gaza, books are a rare, cherished commodity." The subheading is: "Israel does not explicitly ban importing books to Gaza, but the blockade makes it extraordinarily difficult to do so. The shortage amounts to a kind of censorship, Gazans say." The lengthy article begins:

The Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip has been blamed for a multitude of problems facing the population there: malnutrition, unemployment, limited access to electricity and potable water.

Gazan students and educators say that under the Israeli-imposed siege, education is suffering too. The blockade makes it so difficult to bring in books that they are forced to resort to bootlegging and smuggling, they say. The limited supply of original books has driven up costs, making them difficult for most Gazans to afford.

Israel's legal blockade has indeed been blamed for real and fabricated Gaza hardships alike. It's a reporter's job to sift through those claims, sorting out the fact from the fiction.

But Izzidien doesn't. For her, it's enough to say that Israel was blamed. The merit of the outdated accusations are not particularly of any concern to her.

And she then attempts to breathe new life into the old blockade story with the accusation that under "the Israeli-imposed siege" (but not the Egyptian-imposed siege) "education is suffering" and the "blockade makes it so difficult to bring in books. . . ."

Benson - Talking to Hamas, Talking to the Taliban

Pesach Benson..
Honest Reporting/Backspin..
09 February '12..


Rose-colored glasses are de rigueur in the Christian Science Monitor newsroom. With the US engaging the Taliban, this Monitor staff-ed wants to apply similar logic to Israel and Hamas:

President Obama was smart not to follow the example of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who warned against the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation deal. If the United States is willing to talk to the Taliban – even to the point of dropping its preconditions – then Israel should leave a door open to the possibility that Hamas is slowly accepting Israel’s right to exist under a two-state solution.

Whatever the White House calculus is, I wouldn’t be so quick to compare the two situations. It’s easier for Hamas to fire rockets at Israeli cities than it is for the Taliban to strike the US. That makes a different comfort level for dialogue.

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CAMERA - State Department Says Flotilla Participants Could Face Criminal Charges

Steve Stotsky
CAMERA/Snapshots
27 June '11

http://blog.camera.org/archives/2011/06/state_department_says_flotilla.html

The United States government has warned U.S. citizens from participating in the Gaza Flotilla scheduled for this week. State Department Spokesman Victor Nuland said,

We underscore that delivering or attempting or conspiring to deliver material support or other resources to or for the benefit of a designated foreign terrorist organization, such as Hamas, could violate U.S. civil and criminal statutes and could lead to fines and incarceration.

The stern State Department warning against consorting with terrorists contrasts with a news article in the Christian Science Monitor that reads like an advocacy piece for the Flotilla. The "news" report by Dan Murphy states,

This flotilla is attempting to reach Gaza in a dramatically changed regional context from May 2010, before the uprisings collectively known as the Arab Spring. With the chance for real democratic change in Israeli neighbors like Egypt, organizers are hoping to press home their argument that the Palestinian residents of Gaza are as deserving of basic freedoms as any of their neighbors.

Israel does not occupy Gaza, and the lack of basic freedoms among its residents are a result of the policies of Hamas, a U.S. and E.U. defined terrorist organization.
The article goes on to present a one-sided description of last year's flotilla:

But that flotilla was stopped by an Israeli assault that killed nine activists (one with American citizenship) in international waters, sparking international condemnation that led Israeli to ease, though not lift, its blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory.

The United Nations is reportedly releasing a report that severely criticized Turkey's role in the affair and the U.S. and others have supported Israel's right, in fact, obligation, to enforce the blockade.

The article presents opposition to the flotilla by the U.S., the U.N. and E.U. states as a result of "furious" lobbying by Israel. It also depicts flotilla participants like Ann Wright, Alice Walker and Hedy Epstein as "human rights" activists without disclosing their extremist affiliations and long records of hostility to the Jewish state.

(And with so much going on, perhaps we need to ask, what is 
"The current situation in Gaza"? Take a look. Are you surprised? Y.)

Uploaded by noterrorhere on Jun 27, 2011

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Christian Science Monitor: Erasing Jewish Rights

Honest Reporting

Backspin

26 August 09

Walter Rodgers goes far beyond a simple debate over settlements.

Rightly or wrongly, the settlement issue continues to dominate headlines and op-ed columns. Settlements are by no means a consensus issue both inside and outside of Israel and the debate surrounding them is part of a legitimate public discourse.

An op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor by former CNN Jerusalem bureau chief Walter Rodgers, however, presents a distorted and one-sided argument that goes beyond the settlement issue, touching instead on the very legitimacy of Jewish rights to the land of Israel.

Here, we deconstruct some of Rodgers' more egregious statements.

• "Does any serious observer of the region believe that Israel's appetite for land – owned and occupied for generations by Palestinians – is going to abate?"

Considering Walter Rodgers spent 5 and half years living in Jerusalem, his grasp of history is evidently very weak. Rodgers ignores continuous Jewish habitation dating back over 3,000 years while exaggerating Palestinian claims. This, despite the fact that no independent Arab or Palestinian state has ever existed on the land that is now Israel and the Palestinian territories.

In addition, how can Rodgers accuse Israel of an uncontrollable "appetite for land" while ignoring Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005?

• "Just weeks ago, the Israeli government evicted two extended Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem, clearing the way for more houses for Jews in traditionally Palestinian neighborhoods."

Once again failing to add context, Rodgers fails to mention that the two Palestinian families were evicted for non payment of rent following a long and drawn out legal dispute. Instead, Rodgers prefers to imply far more nefarious motives behind Israeli actions which were the result of Israel's court system and not the government as Rodgers charges.

• "Israeli settlements have become a kind of concrete kudzu to Palestinians. The Fatah party recently renewed its commitment to resisting them, holding that "the Palestinians have the right to resist the Israeli occupation by all possible means.""

Is Rodgers suggesting that threatening violence and a return to suicide bombings and terror is understandable or acceptable due to the existence of settlements? The extremist language employed by Fatah at its recent convention did not apply specifically to settlements but to all Israeli presence in the West Bank and beyond.

Rodgers appears to be undisturbed by Palestinian threats of violence but excessively concerned by building taking place within pre-existing settlements. This willingness to excuse or look the other way when Palestinians threaten or carry out violence is symptomatic of a double standard in the media and diplomatic processes.

• "Further, religious and ultrareligious Jewish settlers insist they have divinely bestowed title to the land. Few passages in the Bible are more frightening to Arabs than Deuteronomy 11:24:

"Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be.""

Attributing biblical passages to imply Israeli designs on vast tracts of the Middle East far beyond the borders of Israel or even the West Bank is a staple of Arab conspiracy theories. We seriously doubt that Arabs are genuinely frightened by this biblical passage, which has never been adopted as a policy by any Israeli government.

In stark contrast, the Hamas Charter, basing itself on religious claims, calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, while even the PLO's charter has never been amended to remove this threat. Rodgers may instead wish to ask whether Jews should be the ones fearful of the very real religious and ideological agenda promoted by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the global Jihad movement.

• "From the air, these settlements appear a terrestrial octopus"

While Rodgers may not have meant to draw upon such imagery, it is difficult not to remember where the cartoons and descriptions of a tentacled octopus have appeared before in relation to Jews and Zionists - straight from the pages of Der Sturmer and various anti-Semitic Arab publications.

• "Yet, the moral difficulties of moving indigenous peoples off the land by subterfuge or force are obvious."

Rodgers may use different terminology but the meaning is clear - the accusation of "ethnic cleansing". Of course, the charge is false, as demonstrated by the exponential growth of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the past decades.

Rodgers goes on to play up Jewish power over the US political system and to question the alignment of Israeli and US interests a la Walt and Mearsheimer's Israel Lobby. See here for more on the US-Israeli special relationship and a rebuttal of similar charges to those in Rodgers' op-ed.

Please send your considered comments to the Christian Science Monitor through its online feedback form.