Lying on a huge scale, with the problem being, people believe them.

...doesn’t quite add up to tens of thousands of arrests a year. Addameer is lying, and lying on a huge scale. It is simply making up these numbers out of thin air. The problem is, people believe them. Not only “people”, but putatively ‘credible’ British journalists.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
21 April '15..

An April 17th Daily Mail article about violence in the West Bank town of Bilin during demonstrations to mark Palestinian Prisoners Day focused on sensational photos of a five-year old Palestinian boy throwing stones at Israeli police during the demo, but also attempted to provide some context on the larger issue of Palestinians in Israeli jails.

Prisoners Day is marked every year in solidarity with the more than 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails.

‘We will not leave our prisoners in jail alone,’ rally organiser Abdullah Abu Rahma said.

‘We will defend their right to be released, because the majority of them have been arrested illegally by Israeli forces.’

With Israel having arrested some 800,000 Palestinians in the occupied territories since 1967 – equivalent to 40 percent of the male population – almost every Palestinian family has been affected.

The Daily Mail’s completely unsubstantiated claim – parroted also in a December New York Times article – that 800,000 Palestinians have been arrested since 1967 (a number alternately placed at 750,000 or 900,000) is not new. Popular blogger Elder of Ziyon fisked the story back in 2009, and traces it back to Goldstone Commission testimony from the director of the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

Such numbers would mean that there were, on the average, “over 23,000 new prisoners a year since 1967, or 500 a week”.

(Continue Reading)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 
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Interesting how war tourism is only "ghoulish" when it is Israeli

...The Sderot story was widely circulated as an example of how heartless Israelis are. This story? No one cares, because, hey, they are only Turks and cannot possibly be expected to have the expected and exceptional moral standards of Israelis.

Elder of Ziyon..
12 October '14..

Remember the "Sderot Cinema" story from the summer? Sderot residents who had been under constant rocket fire were made to look like monsters for watching Israeli warplanes fight back against those who who had been making their lives hell. The reporters got the story exactly wrong.

To get an idea of how much of a double standard there is in how Israel is treated in the media, check out this Daily Mail story that describes "war tourists" in Turkey and in the Golan, both looking at the civil war in Syria.

Dressed in casual T-shirts with their arms around each other, the men posing for photographs could be documenting a visit to any tourist attraction in the world.

But these Turkish daytrippers aren't admiring a famous painting or well-known monument - they are taking pictures of U.S. airstrikes against brutal Islamic State terrorists in the Syrian city of Kobane.

With explosions taking place behind them in a city where ISIS have butchered hundreds of Kurds over the last few weeks, the carefree men seem more interested in documenting the moment on digital cameras and mobile phones than coming to terms with the horrific reality of the situation.

...This morning, almost as if they were watching a fireworks display, the spectators took photographs of explosion after explosion as warplanes from the U.S. Air Force hammered terrorist targets in the east and south west of the city.

They are not alone in their fascination with watching a conflict unfold; just weeks ago a fierce three-way battle between Syrian government forces, Al Qaeda-linked rebels and fighters from the Islamic State drew large crowds in neighbouring Israel.

Residents in Golan Heights took took to the mountains in T-shirts, shorts and sunglasses to watch a bloody battle unfold in the town of Quneitra, across the Syrian border beneath them.

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out!
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Top British documentary makers peddle conspiracy theory about secretive Zionist lobby ahead of landmark TV show

Journalist Peter Oborne

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
16 November 09

(This article has been updated with links to the full pamphlet explaining the show which airs Monday night. The distortions therein are quite breathtaking. The update also gives a link to Melanie Phillips’ take on the matter. For both, see the links at the end of the article)

You know the old line about the racist who prefaces a torrent of racially charged abuse with the words: “I’m not a racist, but…”? Something similar about conspiracy theories could be said about the makers of a landmark documentary due to be aired this evening on Britain’s Channel 4 Television alleging that a secretive group of Zionists (just “Zionists”, not Jews you understand) has got hold of Britain’s main political parties and is manipulating them to spew pro-Israeli propaganda.

Writing about their documentary in the Guardian (where else?), Peter Oborne, a columnist for the Daily Mail, and television journalist James Jones are, of course, anxious that they should not actually be labelled as conspiracy theorists and seek to pre-empt such charges thus: “It is important to say what we did not find,” they tell us nervously. “There is no conspiracy, and nothing resembling a conspiracy.”

Except that their entire piece makes it quite clear that a conspiracy is precisely what is being alleged.

Read the rest of this entry ».