Apparently, only a "major obstacle to peace" when they are constructed by Jews - by Bassam Tawil

...Yet as the debate in Israel intensifies over the fate of Amona, the Palestinians are making a mockery of laws and building regulations by embarking on massive construction of illegal neighborhoods and buildings. Apparently, settlements are only a "major obstacle to peace" when they are constructed by Jews.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
05 December '16..
Link: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9490/illegal-settlements

As the international community continues to slam Israel for construction in Jewish settlement communities, Palestinians are quietly engaging in massive construction of entire neighborhoods in many parts of the West Bank and Jerusalem. In addition to overlooking the Palestinian building project, the West has clearly been neglecting a crucial difference between the two efforts: while the construction in the Jewish settlements of the West Bank and neighborhoods of Jerusalem has long been carried out within the frame of the law and in accordance with proper licenses issued by the relevant authorities, the Palestinian construction is illegal in every respect.

In this behind-the-scenes endeavor, which does not meet even the most minimum standards required by engineers, architects and housing planners, the Palestinian goal is to create irreversible facts on the ground.

A quick tour of the areas surrounding Jerusalem from the north, east and south easily exposes the colossal construction that is taking place there. In most cases, these high-rise buildings are slapped together without licenses or any adequate planning or safety concerns.

The Jewish outpost of Amona in the central West Bank, home to 42 families, is currently the subject of fiery controversy both in Israel and in the international arena. In 2006, the High Court of Israel ruled that the outpost is illegal under Israeli law because it lies on private Palestinian land. In 2014, the High Court ordered the government to evacuate and demolish the entire outpost within two years.

In Israel, as Amona demonstrates, no one is above the law. Israel boasts an independent judiciary system that is second to none.

Yet as the debate in Israel intensifies over the fate of Amona, the Palestinians are making a mockery of laws and building regulations by embarking on massive construction of illegal neighborhoods and buildings. Apparently, settlements are only a "major obstacle to peace" when they are constructed by Jews.

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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. 

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Aleppo, Gaza and Double Standards - by Simon Plosker

...Unfortunately for the 250,000 residents of Aleppo, the city is not being attacked by the IDF. There are no leaflets being dropped warning civilians to evacuate areas in the line of fire. There is no “roof knocking” — where non-explosive devices are dropped on the roofs of targeted buildings to give civilians time to flee. And judging by the number of civilian casualties and the extent of the destruction in Syria, there is very little to no concern for the well-being of innocent civilians.

IDF paratroopers in Gaza during Operation
Protective Edge. Photo: Wikipedia.

Simon Plosker..
Algemeiner.com..
29 September '16..

Make no mistake, the carnage taking place in Aleppo right now is a disgrace to the international community.

The Syrian government and Russian-backed forces are reportedly using chemical weapons, barrel bombs and increasingly powerful explosives to target innocent men, women and children. While rebel fighters have undoubtedly embedded themselves in the city in fortified positions, it appears that the civilian population is bearing the brunt of the conflict.

While there has been some condemnation from the UN, where are the protests on the streets of European capitals and where is the media frenzy about this disgrace?

Had Israel been involved, or had the IDF aimed one solitary munition at Aleppo, I think the response would be much different.

The international community’s condemnation of the Assad regime and Putin’s Russia is nothing compared to the vitriol leveled against Israel for its far more restrained (and completely justified) 2014 operation against Hamas in Gaza.

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Simon Plosker is Managing Editor of HonestReporting (www.honestreporting.com).

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. 

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Surprise? At the U.N., Only Israel Is an ‘Occupying Power’ - by Eugene Kontorovich/Penny Grunseid

...Our findings don’t merely quantify the U.N.’s double standard. The evidence shows that the organization’s claim to represent the interest of international justice is hollow, because the U.N. has no interest in battling injustice unless Israel is the country accused.

Eugene Kontorovich/Penny Grunseid..
Wall St. Journal..
13 September '16..
Link: http://www.wsj.com/articles/at-the-u-n-only-israel-is-an-occupying-power-1473808544

The United Nations began its annual session this week, and Israel will be prominent on the agenda. Many fear the Security Council may consider a resolution setting definite territorial parameters, and a deadline, for the creation of a Palestinian state.

President Obama has hinted that in the final months of his term, he may reverse the traditional U.S. policy of vetoing such resolutions. The General Assembly, meanwhile, is likely to act as the chorus in this drama, reciting its yearly litany of resolutions criticizing Israel.

If Mr. Obama is seeking to leave his mark on the Israeli-Arab conflict—and outside the negotiated peace process that began in Oslo—there is no worse place to do it than the U.N. New research we have conducted shows that the U.N.’s focus on Israel not only undermines the organization’s legitimacy regarding the Jewish state. It also has apparently made the U.N. blind to the world’s many situations of occupation and settlements.

Our research shows that the U.N. uses an entirely different rhetoric and set of legal concepts when dealing with Israel compared with situations of occupation or settlements world-wide. For example, Israel is referred to as the “Occupying Power” 530 times in General Assembly resolutions. Yet in seven major instances of past or present prolonged military occupation—Indonesia in East Timor, Turkey in northern Cyprus, Russia in areas of Georgia, Morocco in Western Sahara, Vietnam in Cambodia, Armenia in areas of Azerbaijan, and Russia in Ukraine’s Crimea—the number is zero. The U.N. has not called any of these countries an “Occupying Power.” Not even once.

Question. Would forcing Jews out of Judea and Samaria be ethnic cleansing? - by Elder of Ziyon

...Applying these standards to Judea and Samaria, Human Rights Watch would have to admit that the Jews who moved there voluntarily and built their own homes - which is nearly all of them - have the right to stay in their homes since there is no other claimant. But being the hypocrites that they are, Human Rights Watch would never, ever say this about Jews in Judea.

Elder of Ziyon..
11 September '16..

Leftist Israelis and many Westerners are upset an Binyain Netanyahu's video where he said that a Palestinian state that would include no Jews in Judea and Samaria would be practicing ethnic cleansing.



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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. 

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The BBC’s claim to impartial reporting, European ‘fear’ and Israeli ‘paranoia’ by Hadar Sela

...As readers no doubt recall the BBC long since made it clear that it believes that terror attacks against Israelis are “very different” from – and not comparable to – those perpetrated against citizens of other nations. Apparently it is also of the opinion that the concerns of Israeli civilians can be portrayed differently from those of citizens of EU countries. While the BBC refuses to acknowledge that the double standard it promotes is a “significant issue of general importance”, we remain convinced that it compromises the BBC’s claim to impartial reporting.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
03 August '16..

Last October we discussed an article by Kevin Connolly – then of the BBC’s Jerusalem bureau – which has since been promoted as ‘related reading’ many times on the BBC News website.

“During the first three weeks of October 2015, ten Israelis were killed and 112 wounded – eleven of them seriously – in forty stabbing attacks, four shootings and five vehicular attacks which took place throughout the country.

On October 23rd, however, BBC News told its audiences that Israelis are suffering from either a collective psychosis ‘characterised by delusions of persecution’ or ‘unjustified suspicion and mistrust of other people’ – depending on which definition of the word paranoia BBC editors intended their headline to communicate.

Either way, it is obviously extremely hard to believe that if British citizens had been subjected to such a wave of terror attacks, the BBC would characterise their mood as unjustified or disconnected from reality by using the term ‘paranoia’. And it is of course equally unlikely that after over fifty attacks on British citizens in three weeks, the BBC would still be avoiding the use of the word ‘terror’ – as it continues to do in its current coverage of Israel.”

Happily, such a scenario has not transpired in Britain but at the end of July, the BBC World Service turned its attentions to “the fear that lies over Europe” in an edition of ‘The World This Week’.

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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. 

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Hey, BDS-Loving Professors, Why So Quiet?

If you want to boycott Israel but not Erdogan’s dictatorship, there’s an old and useful term that might describe you well

Liel Leibovitz..
Tablet Magazine..
20 July '16..

Following the failed coup attempt in Turkey last weekend, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has stripped 59, 628 private school teachers of their accreditation, and the state-run Council of Higher Education called on all 1,577 the deans of private and public universities to immediately resign. Yesterday, the government took the assault on academic freedom a step further, firing an additional 100 academics and issuing a travel ban on all professors still employed.

In light of this blatant assault on the very core of academic freedom, I would like to offer a hearty mazel tov to the legions of American academic associations rising up to fight for principle and stand in solidarity with their beleaguered Turkish colleagues. The calls this week by the American Anthropological Association, the American Studies Association, the Association for Asian American Studies, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies, the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, and others were all shining examples of precisely the sort of fierce commitment to freedom and justice we’ve come to expect of American academics, those lionhearted champions of liberty, those defenders of moral…

What’s that? None of them said anything? Even though they have all voted to boycott Israel for its alleged academic apartheid, a cruel policy of discrimination that has led to such clear abuses like a dramatic increase in the percentage of Arab students attending Israeli universities? How odd.

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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. 

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Terrorism and the Double Standard Haunting Europe - by Tom Wilson

...Nevertheless, the question is not one of whether Wallstrom’s comments about Israel were acceptable; we already knew that they were not. Rather, the question here is whether the Swedish foreign ministry is going to be consistent because a standard has now been set. As such, Margot Wallstrom has a choice on her hands. Either she can come out and call for equivalent investigations into the actions of the German and French police—and provoke popular and diplomatic fury from across Europe—or she could not hold European countries to the same standard she holds Israel to, and in doing so confirm that she operates a bigoted and discriminatory attitude toward the Jewish state.

AP Photo/Peter Dejong

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
19 July '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/terrorism/europe-terrorism-israel/

As many have already noted, the spree of recent Islamist terror attacks across Europe feel reminiscent of some of the Palestinian attacks that Israeli civilians have been enduring for decades. And as Europeans confront this wave of violence, they are fast adopting the same means that Israelis have been forced take when trying to defend themselves. Yesterday, when an Afghan migrant and Islamic State devotee in Germany began attacking commuters on a busy train, he was quickly shot and killed by security. Similarly, the horrific truck attack last week in Nice was only brought to an end when the French police shot and killed Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who also appears to have been linked with ISIS.

When comparable knife attacks and car rammings have happened in Israel, security forces there acted similarly. Of course, on many occasions, Israel’s border police and army have managed to shoot and merely disable assailants. But when that has not been possible, Palestinian attackers have been shot and killed in an effort to save the lives of Israeli civilians in immediate harm’s way. It would seem morally obvious that sometimes this is what has to be done to bring a terror assault to the swiftest possible conclusion.

Yet Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom had an objection to Israelis defending themselves in this way. In January, when allegations were made in the Swedish parliament that Israel was perpetrating “extrajudicial executions” of Palestinian attackers, Wallstrom gave credence to these allegations. “It is vital that there is a thorough, credible investigation into these deaths in order to clarify and bring about possible accountability,” she said. By the same standard, we should now expect to hear Sweden’s foreign ministry call upon their French and German neighbors to undertake investigations into the circumstances under which the German train and Nice attackers were killed.

Actually, the opposite of the truth - by MK Yoav Kisch

...We must not let lies propagated by radical leftist groups affect our relationship with the U.S. And the U.S. ambassador, who is a good friend of ours, must not act as a spokesman for an extreme leftist ideology that Israeli society has justly rejected in an outright manner.

MK Yoav Kisch..
Israel Hayom..
20 January '16..

In a speech on Monday, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro claimed that Israel applies "two standards of adherence to the rule of law: one for Israelis and another for Palestinians." In fact, Israel uses a very heavy hand against Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria who commit crimes. When it comes to acts of terrorism and murder, Israeli security forces exert great effort to catch the culprits, whether they be Arabs or Jews. Shapiro acknowledged this regarding the Duma arson case, but it also goes for the Muhammad Abu Khdeir murder case, as well as all other murder and terrorism cases.

Yet, in some realms, the law is not applied equally and this is done in a way that actually favors the Palestinians. Take, for example, illegal construction in Judea and Samaria. The Palestinian have constructed thousands upon thousands of illegal buildings in Judea and Samaria, some funded by the European Union for the purpose of creating facts on the ground. Very few of these illegal buildings end up being demolished by Israel.

On the other hand, the Israeli legal system makes sure that Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria is conducted in strict accordance with the law. This is also true when it comes to traffic violations in Judea and Samaria. For Jews, there is strict police enforcement of traffic laws. Yet Israeli law enforcement officials are often helpless in the face of Palestinian violations of the same traffic laws. This has been detailed in reports issued by the state comptroller on law enforcement in Judea and Samaria.

It may be that Shapiro was misled by radical leftist nongovernmental organizations which regularly publish false reports about supposed Israeli "apartheid" practices. If this is the case, I recommend that Shapiro examine the credibility of the sources of these reports. Recently, it has become ever more clear that members of these NGOs are self-righteous fools driven by an extreme anti-Israel ideology. They will let nothing stand in the way of them achieving their goals, even if this means harming Palestinians. This is one of the reasons I initiated the bill regarding the funding of NGOs by foreign governments.

The Price of Folly, Double Standards and the Intifada - Jonathan S. Tobin

...The price of that folly is, as it has been from the outset, been paid in the blood of victims of terror at the hands of Palestinians that think they are acting on behalf of the just cause of ridding the country of its Jewish population. Unwarranted criticisms such as those of Shapiro don’t merely fall on deaf ears inside Israel. They undermine any rationale for moderation on the part of the Palestinians and tell the world that the U.S. no longer stands by its allies. That the administration persists in such folly after seven years speaks volumes about the damaging role it has played in making the Middle East a more dangerous place.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
20 January '16..

That the Obama administration has forfeited the trust of Israelis is not news. After seven years of picking fights with their government over consensus issues like Jerusalem, the 1967 borders and then embracing détente with Iran, the growing divide between the two allies is not in dispute. Having come into office seeking to create greater daylight between the U.S. and Israel, President Obama has gone further toward achieving that dubious goal than even many of his critics might have thought possible in January 2009. But with the Iran deal now a fait accompli and the Palestinian Authority having squandered all of the advantages Obama tried to give them by attacking the Netanyahu government one might think that relations have sunk about as low as they can go. Since, thanks to Palestinian intransigence, even the administration seems to concede that the peace Obama once thought he would achieve is not possible, what possible purpose would more American attacks on Israel serve?

There’s no ready answer to that question, but the latest contretemps between the administration and the Jewish state highlights a problem that goes deeper than the personal dislike between Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu or even the president’s disappointment at being denied the opportunity to cut the Gordian Knot of Middle East peace. Far from being just a harmless spat, the latest irritant in the fractious relationship between Israel and the United States is actually an example of how Western governments don’t merely bungle the peace process but blunder into statements that actively create incentives for Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

The problem stems from a speech given Monday by Dan Shapiro, the U.S. ambassador to Israel. By blasting Israel’s government for employing “double standards” in justice in the West Bank, Shapiro was wading into dangerous territory. Asserting that Israel doesn’t punish attacks on Arabs the way they do those against Jews, Shapiro was not only making an argument that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. He was also promoting an invidious moral equivalence between the two sides in the conflict that ultimately serves to encourage Palestinians to think they are justified in carrying out random attacks on any Jew within reach.
Part of the reason for the hostile reaction to Shapiro’s speech was bad timing. Though the meme that Israel lets Jewish settlers in the West Bank get away with murder is a popular one on the left, it is a lot harder to make that argument in the wake of the draconian methods employed by Netanyahu’s government to track down the murderers in an arson attack on an Arab village last summer. Though the assailants were part of an isolated fringe group whose sympathizers many only number a few hundred and active participants are far fewer than that, Israeli security services not only arrested them but treated them with the same tough measures employed against Arab terror suspects. That included being held without charges or access to lawyers. Some of those caught up in the investigation even claimed they were tortured and saw no irony in complaining about practices that they applaud when used against Palestinian suspects.

Shapiro’s speech was also ill-timed because he gave it on the same day Dafna Meir, a 40-year-old Jewish mother of six, was buried. She was stabbed to death while defending her children from a Palestinian terrorist that burst into their home in a settlement near Hebron. But, of course, Meir is just the latest victim in a murder campaign being carried out by Palestinians in what is being called the “stabbing intifada.” Though Shapiro duly condemned the murder of Meir, the problem is that he seemed to be treating allegations of minor violence by settlers as being essentially the same thing as the daily attempts to slaughter Jews that has been happening for months.

Ramadi, Gaza, and Western Hypocrisy - by Evelyn Gordon

...if those officials retain even a shred of intellectual integrity, the recent devastation of Ramadi during a joint Western/Iraqi effort to retake the city leaves them only two options: either hand themselves over to the International Criminal Court as suspected war criminals, or publicly apologize to Israel for all the slurs they hurled at it over far less extensive damage.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
14 January '16..

During the Hamas-Israel war of 2014, both Obama Administration officials and their European counterparts repeatedly accused Israel of excessive force over the “massive” destruction of civilian property in Gaza. But if those officials retain even a shred of intellectual integrity, the recent devastation of Ramadi during a joint Western/Iraqi effort to retake the city leaves them only two options: either hand themselves over to the International Criminal Court as suspected war criminals, or publicly apologize to Israel for all the slurs they hurled at it over far less extensive damage.

As the New York Times reported last week, the successful recapture of Ramadi from the Islamic State left the city “in ruins.” Reporter Ben Hubbard described one neighborhood as “a panorama of wreckage so vast that it was unclear where the original buildings had stood.” The city has no electricity or running water, and “Many streets had been erased or remained covered in rubble or blocked by trenches used in the fighting.” When Hubbard asked an Iraqi officer how residents would return to their homes, the officer replied, “Homes? There are no homes.”

Indeed, a different Iraqi officer told the Associated Press “that more than half of the city’s buildings have been destroyed, including government offices, markets, and houses.”

This is devastation orders of magnitude greater than what Gaza suffered. According to UN figures, 9,465 homes in Gaza were completely destroyed and another 9,644 badly damaged, out of a total of roughly 319,000 (the latter figure is my own calculation based on official Palestinian statistics: Dividing Gaza’s total population of 1.82 million by its average household size of 5.7 people gives you 319,000 households). Thus even according to the UN – which traditionally exaggerates Palestinian casualties and damage – only about 6 percent of Gaza’s homes were destroyed or badly damaged. That’s a far cry from “more than half of the city” in Ramadi.

But the reasons for the destruction, in both places, are no less significant than its scope. One, as Hubbard noted, is the inherent difficulty “of dislodging a group that stitches itself into the urban fabric of communities it seizes by occupying homes, digging tunnels, and laying extensive explosives.” In Ramadi, he reported, Islamic State built tunnels under the streets and planted explosives in roads and buildings. Indeed, “Entire areas are considered no-go zones because they have yet to be searched for booby traps left by the jihadists.”

These are the same tactics Hamas used in Gaza: Tunnels, booby traps, and weapons stockpiles were placed in and under civilian buildings on a massive scale. On July 30, 2014, for instance, three Israeli soldiers were killed by “an explosion at a booby-trapped UNRWA health clinic that housed a tunnel entry shaft,” the Times of Israel reported. At the same press briefing where those deaths were announced, an Israeli officer said Hamas had thus far detonated more than 1,000 bombs, destroying “thousands of buildings” in Gaza. As an example, he cited a street the army searched the previous night in which 19 out of 28 buildings were booby-trapped.

But in Gaza, both the Obama administration and European officials blamed Israel for the ensuing destruction. In Ramadi, in contrast, both American and Iraqi officials quite sensibly “placed blame for the city’s destruction on the jihadists, who mined roads and buildings.”

BBC News double standards on use of the word terror - by Hadar Sela

...In our view, the BBC’s inconsistent application of those editorial guidelines and the resulting two-tier system of reporting is evidence of precisely the type of “value judgement” it supposedly seeks to avoid and indicates that the choice of language when reporting acts of terror is subject to political considerations which undermine the BBC’s claim of impartiality. If further evidence of those double standards were needed, it could be found in an article published on the BBC News website on January 3rd under the title “Israelis charged over fatal West Bank family arson attack“.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
06 January '16..

BBC coverage of the ongoing wave of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis which began in mid-September has been hallmarked by blanket avoidance of the use of the word terror to describe the attacks or of the term terrorist to describe the perpetrators.

Experienced observers of BBC content will not have been surprised by that: the relevant BBC editorial guidelines state:

“There is no agreed consensus on what constitutes a terrorist or terrorist act. The use of the word will frequently involve a value judgement.

As such, we should not change the word “terrorist” when quoting someone else, but we should avoid using it ourselves.” [emphasis added]

Whilst those guidelines are controversial and considered by many to be unfit for purpose, they are ostensibly the basis for all BBC reporting on the subject of terror attacks. Nevertheless, we have often documented the BBC’s inconsistency in adhering to those guidelines on these pages, pointing out that they are applied in some geographical locations but not in others. We have also criticized the corporation’s use of coy euphemisms such as ‘militants’ or ‘radicals’ to describe members of recognized terrorist organisations such as Hamas and Hizballah and its serial avoidance of use of the word terror in reports on violent attacks against Israelis.

In our view, the BBC’s inconsistent application of those editorial guidelines and the resulting two-tier system of reporting is evidence of precisely the type of “value judgement” it supposedly seeks to avoid and indicates that the choice of language when reporting acts of terror is subject to political considerations which undermine the BBC’s claim of impartiality.

If further evidence of those double standards were needed, it could be found in an article published on the BBC News website on January 3rd under the title “Israelis charged over fatal West Bank family arson attack“.Duma attack indictments

There, not for the first time, readers found the words “Jewish terrorists” used not in a quote, but by the BBC itself.

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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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Double Standards? Terror in London But Not Terror in Jerusalem?

...For the Mail Online (and others) it appears that there is a different standard at work when it comes to what is terrorism. When British people are on the receiving end it is undoubtedly terrorism. When Israelis are the victims or Palestinians the perpetrators, it is somehow questionable. Yet one more example of the insidious double standards at work in the media when it comes to coverage of Israel.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
08 December '15..

In recent days London has experienced a similar incident to the many Palestinian stabbing attacks that have taken place against Israelis over the past few months.

An attacker, who was later found to have material linked to Syria and global terror on his cellphone, slashed passersby at a London Underground station while shouting “this is for Syria, my Muslim brothers.”

As far as the UK security forces are concerned, this was an act of terrorism carried out by a radicalized individual. Indeed, the Daily Mail’s Mail Online makes it quite clear in its headline and opening sentence that this is terrorism.

Compare the above, however, with a story published only hours later concerning a terrorist knife attack in Jerusalem.

Terrorism, Terrorists and Double Standards

...As even those like President Obama, who have tried to downplay the danger from ISIS terrorists, hopefully start to sober up about the need to take this war seriously, the one exception to the united front against terror still appears to be Israel. So long as Western leaders treat killers of Jews as being worthy of understanding and condemn Israelis for defending themselves, terror will continue. Those who correctly lament the tragedies in Paris and San Bernardino should also spare a moment in their public expressions of sympathy for Israelis that continue to undergo a daily terror nightmare without the benefit of support from Facebook.

(Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto) --- Image
by © Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Corbis

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
06 December '15..

Americans are still shaken by the San Bernardino shooting this past week and the revelations that — contrary to the initial assurances of the Obama administration and the mainstream liberal media — it was an act of Islamist terrorism. But for Israelis, such outbreaks of violence, largely inspired by Muslim religious fanaticism, are routine events. For more than two months, a so-called “stabbing intifada” has been going on there in which every day Palestinians try to stab, shoot, run over, or stone random Jews they see on the street. Yet unlike their reactions to tragedies that happen elsewhere, Facebook users around the world aren’t changing their profile pictures to express their sympathy with the victims or to express outrage at the terrorists. To the contrary, much of the world seems primarily interested in blaming the Israeli victims and treating acts of self-defense by the victims and Israeli police as the real problem. A classic example of this double standard comes from Sweden where Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom claimed Israel was conducting “extrajudicial executions” of Palestinian terrorists.

Wallstrom was referring to the fact that some of those who attempt to murder Israelis have been shot dead while trying to commit murder by their intended victims or by police that come to their rescue. Later, Wallstrom walked back that remark to some extent and claimed she was merely saying that Israel’s response to terror was “disproportionate” and blamed both sides for the problem. If any of those at the holiday party that the San Bernardino killers targeted had the ability to fire back at their attackers, would that have been considered disproportionate? At best, this is a reprehensible example of a false moral equivalence between terrorists and victims. At worst, it’s yet another blood libel against the Jewish state whose premise is that, unlike other people, Jews don’t have the right to try and stop people from killing them.

But that’s not the only double standard regarding Israel and terrorism.

When Double Standards and Doublespeak Pits the US Against Israel

...Sometimes, a man’s got to do what a man—or woman—has got to do. And shooting someone who wants to take your life is as correct and appropriate a response at the border between California and Mexico as it is in the clash between terrorist Palestinians and Israeli citizens.

Micah Halpern..
Observer.com..
26 October '15..

About midnight, on October 21st, a man wielding a knife lunged at a border patrol officer. The assailant was shot four times.

Did you hear about this incident? Probably not. That’s because the incident took place took place not somewhere in Israel, where all incidents of this type are recorded and broadcast around the world, but at the border crossing in Calexico, California, just across the border from Mexicali, Mexico.

The reason the man was shot by a Border & Patrol Protection officer and, subsequently, died from his wounds, should be obvious. People wielding knives and lunging at police—or anyone else, intend to injure or kill and it is essential to stop those attacker immediately—before they do their harm and people are killed.

If the Palestinians speak untruths it’s one thing. But when the United States delivers falsehoods, it’s something else entirely.

This incident did not make international headlines. There was no outcry and no rage for the poor guy even after details emerged and we learned that he was on a bicycle and jumped off it to perpetrate his attack and that he was denied entry into the United States and that was why he went on his rampage.

There is a double standard here.

If this incident would have happened in Israel, the country’s many critics would be screaming about the murder of innocent people riding their bikes. The Palestinian propaganda machine would have turned the truth upside down to convince the world that the killer was the victim.

International Hypocrisy and the World's Indifference to the Siege of Cizre

...What may be necessary, however, if the international community does not want to expose itself as completely hypocritical, is to ensure that Turkey’s government can no long blockade and impose collective punishment on either its Kurdish minority. Perhaps it’s time for the blue helmets to ensure that all towns and villages in Turkey, regardless of the ethnicity of their residents, receive food, and full access to medicine, water, and basic health and sanitary services. Surely, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would not want Turkey statistically to fall even further behind the residents of the Gaza Strip.

Michael Rubin..
Commentary Magazine..
13 September '15..







The international press has bizarrely picked up — with credulity — a United Nations report from some time ago arguing that by 2020, the Gaza Strip might be uninhabitable. Here, for example, is the BBC:

The Gaza Strip will not be “a liveable place” by 2020 unless action is taken to improve basic services in the territory, according to a UN report. Basic infrastructure “is struggling to keep pace with a growing population”, the UN Country Team (UNCT) in the occupied Palestinian territory said. It estimates Gaza’s population will rise from 1.6m to 2.1m by 2020. Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza after the Islamist movement Hamas seized power in the coastal territory in 2007.

What the report does not emphasize, of course, is the responsibility for the supposed calamity on the part of Hamas. After all, Hamas has chosen to emphasize terror over development, and has — often with the complicity of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) — diverted funds or co-opted relief supplies, schools, and hospitals to manufacture if not store weaponry aimed at killing Israelis indiscriminately. If Hamas cast aside its genocidal ideology and if the Palestinians ceased their governments’ endemic corruption, they might become like Dubai or Singapore. Then again, diplomats and analysts must exist in the realm of reality and not fantasy. Nor does the report acknowledge that the residents of Gaza enjoy a far greater standard of living in key respects than those living in other countries. Gazans, for example, enjoy greater life expectancy than Malaysians, Bulgarians, Thais, Egyptians, Turks, Brazilians, and dozens of other nationalities. Some have suggested infant mortality has risen under the territory’s Hamas stewardship, but even if such figures are taken at face value, then Gaza has a better situation for infant health than Tunisia, Mongolia, Egypt, and much of Central America. Perhaps Israel’s (legal) blockade — one in which all essential materials, food and medicine gets through, as well as many non-essential goods.

Not every location subject to a security crackdown is so lucky. Take the Turkish army’s ongoing siege of Cizre, a picturesque town (which I have frequently visited) near where Iraq, Turkey, and Syria converge. Earlier this week, I received the following email from a former Turkish official detailing the situation:

Jewish Terrorism, Palestinian Terrorism, and a Pronounced NY Times Double Standard

...It is hard to avoid the conclusion that The New York Times, in practice at least, is less outraged about the murder of Israeli Jews than about the murder of Palestinians. And it appears that this, at least in part, is because its journalists strain to consistently promote a narrative of a morally questionable Israel acting against more or less blameless Palestinians. It is a simplistic, dishonest account. But for some journalists at the newspaper, the narrative justifies the dishonestly.

Gilead Ini..
CAMERA Media Analyses..
11 August '15..

The horrific violence that recently shook Israel and the West Bank has led to many grim conclusions about the potential for bloodshed, some encouraging conclusions about Israeli society's intolerance for Jewish terrorism, and at least one unpleasant conclusion about America's most influential newspaper: There is a glaring difference between the way The New York Times covers Palestinian violence and the way it covers Israeli violence.

On such topics, the newspaper is guilty of a chronic double standard — a slow and subtle form of media bias that aims to make similarities feel different and differences feel similar, with the goal of steering the public toward a particular political view. Responsible news coverage, of course, should do the opposite: make similarities feel similar and differences feel different. This should be true, too, of the similarities and differences between Palestinian and Israeli terrorism.

Similarities and Differences

When it comes to murderous attacks targeting civilians, the similarities are painfully straightforward: Blood is blood. Innocence is innocence. The pain of a child lost is the terrible pain of a child lost, no matter the victim's religion, language, or ethnicity.

A newspaper can seek to stir moral outrage about terrorism; it can aim to mitigate with context; or it can do something in between. Whatever path it chooses, though, its approach should be generally consistent, without changing based on the identity of the attacker. Among other things, this means that if one ethnic group's reaction to "their" terrorism deserves so much exploration, so many words, and so many articles, the same should be the case for another group's reaction to their own terrorism.

At the same time, some differences in coverage are clearly appropriate. Evenhandedness doesn't mean two similar actions must be described with exactly the same words. It means they are to be approached with the same journalistic guidelines in mind, captured with the same lens, scrutinized with the same skepticism, and contextualized to the same extent. When there are disparities on the ground, an effective journalist will find a way to reflect them as clearly as possible.

And there are plenty of disparities on the ground.

As a whole Palestinian terrorism is a much bigger problem. By an overwhelming margin, many more victims have been murdered by Palestinians targeting Jewish civilians than the other way around. Coverage should reflect, not obscure, this truth.

Another difference: On those rare occasions when it seems clear Israeli Jews are the perpetrators of murderous terrorism, there tends to be vocal outrage and soul-searching in Israeli society. By contrast, many Palestinian polls show majorities in favor of anti-Israel terrorism (you can find one recent example here), and Palestinian leaders often celebrate the murderers of civilians. A newspaper should convey these realities, even if this means readers will see articles about Israeli "soul searching" but no such reports about Palestinian society.

The continuing double standards of Gaza and Yemen continue

...In both Yemen and Gaza, these NGOs do not have access to information from the army commanders have, and that information is essential to knowing whether there were violations of the laws of armed conflict. When Amnesty and HRW flatly declare Israel violated those laws, they are lying. But when Saudi Arabia acts with less precision, less care and more lethality, suddenly these organizations are sticklers for accuracy.

Elder of Ziyon..
07 July '15..

The NYT reports that more civilians have now been killed in Yemen this year than were killed last year in Gaza, even according to the UN's inflated Gaza figures:

Yet Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, which flatly and repeatedly declared Israel's actions in Gaza last year to be violations of the laws of war, are still reluctant to say the same about Saudi Arabia.

I've previously shown comparisons of how HRW described Israel in much harsher and categorical terms when reporting on airstrikes then they did for Saudi Arabia. But even this past week, HRW and Amnesty continued to put caveats around calling Saudi actions illegal.

HRW:

While many coalition airstrikes were directed at legitimate military targets in the city, Human Rights Watch identified several attacks that appeared to violate international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war, and resulted in numerous civilian deaths and injuries.

Coalition attacks struck at least six residential houses not being used for military purposes. One attack killed 27 members of a single family, including 17 children. The airstrikes also hit at least five markets for which there was no evidence of military activity. Aerial attacks on an empty school and a crowded petrol station appear also to have violated the laws of war.

(Read Full Post)

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How the State Of Palestine and Islamic State Highlight International Double Standards

...“Palestine” – not a State – is recognised as a State. “Islamic State” – a State – is not recognised as a State. No wonder the world is in such a state of turmoil and confusion.

David Singer..
JWire.com..
03 July '15.

UNESCO, the United Nations and just this week – the Vatican – have recognised that the “State of Palestine” exists, despite the fact that it lacks all four basic requirements laid down in Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention 1933:

“The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a ) a permanent population; b ) a defined territory; c ) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”

Reverend Federico Lombardi – the Vatican spokesman – confirmed the Holy See’s stance:

“Yes, it’s a recognition that the state exists”

The Vatican is justifiably concerned to protect Christian communities in the Middle East against further ongoing death, dispersion and destruction of their churches as has occurred to Christian communities in Syria and Iraq during the last twelve months.

Easing the concerns of Christians in the West Bank would have certainly played a part in the Vatican’s decision.

Bethlehem’s Christian population has been reduced from 60% in the 1990’s – prior to coming under Palestinian Authority control in 1995 – to 15% Christian by 2013 – whilst 1,000 Christians are reported to be leaving every year.

However Christian population growth in Israel last year stood at 1.3%.

Risking a rift in its relations with Israel displays poor judgement by the Vatican given these realities.

Those 107 member States voting for Palestine’s admission to UNESCO on 31 October 2011 did so in direct contravention of Article II (2) of the UNESCO Constitution which provides:

“… states not members of the United Nations Organization may be admitted to membership of the Organization ….”

Voting to admit into UNESCO an entity that is not a lawful state is beyond understanding.

The UN General Assembly compounded UNESCO’s amazing decision when 138 UN member States voted to recognize Palestine as a “non-member observer state” on 29 November 2012.

The rule of law was thrown out the window with these UNESCO and UN decisions.

The international response to Islamic State has been markedly different since its declaration on 29 June 2014.

Barack Obama's anti-Semitism test by Caroline Glick

...As Obama rightly understands, in the coming months, as he tries to sell his nuclear deal with Iran and his anti-Israel positions at the UN to the American public, the question of whether or not he is an anti-Semite will become more salient than ever before. Now that he has answered the question, Israel needs to act in accordance with Jewish values, and choose life even at the expense of good relations with the Obama administration.

photo credit:REUTERS / JONATHAN ERNST

Caroline Glick..
Column One/JPost..
28 May '15..

Is U.S. President Barack Obama an anti-Semite? This question has lingered in the air since his first presidential bid in 2008. It first arose due to the anti-Semitic sermons that Jeremiah Wright, his pastor for more than 20 years, made as Obama and his family sat in the pews.

Throughout the six-and-a-half years of his presidency, Obama has laughed off the concerns.

But he has not dispelled them. And this failure has hurt him.

So last week, Obama went to significant lengths to answer the question about his feelings toward Israel and the Jewish people once and for all.

The timing of his charm offensive wasn’t coincidental.

Obama clearly believes he has to dispel doubts about his intentions toward Jews and Israel in order to implement the central policy of his second term in office. That policy of course is his nuclear deal with Iran.

Obama’s agreement with the mullahs is supposed to be concluded by the end of next month.

Obama argues that his deal will prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. But as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained in his address before the joint houses of Congress in March, from what has already been revealed about the nuclear deal Obama seeks to conclude, far from preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear arms, the deal will provide several pathways for Iran to at a minimum become a threshold nuclear state, capable of developing nuclear weapons at the drop of a hat. If Iran cheats on the deal, it can develop nuclear weapons while the agreement is still in force. If it abides by the agreement, it can develop nuclear weapons as soon as the agreement expires.

Beyond his desire to conclude a nuclear deal that will empower a regime that has pledged to destroy Israel, there are Obama’s reported plans for changing the way the US relates to Israel at the UN Security Council.

For the past half-century, the US has used its veto power at the Security Council to prevent substantive anti-Israel draft resolutions from passing. But Obama and his top advisers have hinted and media reports have provided details about his intention to end this 50-year policy.

Obama reportedly intends to enable the passage of a French draft resolution that would require Israel to withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines.

As these two policies, which bear directly on Israel’s ability to defend itself and indeed, to survive, near implementation, Obama is faced with the fact that he has a credibility problem when it comes to issues related to the survival and existence of the Jewish state.

In a bid to address this credibility problem, last week he invested significant time and effort in building up his credibility on Jewish issues. To this end, he gave an extensive interview to Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, and he gave a speech before Adas Israel, a large, liberal Conservative synagogue in Washington, DC.

To a degree, Obama was successful. He did put to bed the question of whether or not he is anti-Semitic.

In his interview with Goldberg, Obama gave a reasonable if incomplete definition of what anti-Semitism is. Obama said that an anti-Semite is someone who refuses to recognize the 3,000-year connection between the Jews and the Land of Israel. An anti-Semite is also someone who refuses to recognize the long history of persecution that the Jewish people suffered in the Diaspora.

According to Obama, an anti-Semite is someone who refuses to understand that this history of persecution together with the Jews’ millennial connection to the Land of Israel is what justifies the existence of Israel in the Land of Israel.

Moreover, according to Obama, anti-Semites refuse to understand that Israel remains in mortal danger due to the continued existence of anti-Semitic forces that seek its destruction.

And that isn’t all. As he sees it, even if you do understand the legitimacy of Israel’s existence and recognize the continued threats to its survival, you could still be an anti-Semite.

As Obama explained to Goldberg, there is still the problem of double standards.

In his words, “If you acknowledge those things, then you should be able to align yourself with Israel where its security is at stake, you should be able to align yourself with Israel when it comes to making sure that it is not held to a double standard in international fora, you should align yourself with Israel when it comes to making sure that it is not isolated.”

To his credit, Obama provided a clear, well-argued and constructive definition of anti-Semitism.

But there’s a bit of a problem. Right after Obama provided us with his definition of anti-Semitism, he endorsed and indeed engaged in the very anti-Semitism he had just defined.

If you are under threat from a non-Israeli force, forget about it.

...For these campaigners, Palestinians are, in essence, political props, bit-part players in Western activists’ own narcissistic desire to find one evil entity that they can pin every global problem on. The driving force here isn’t concern for Palestinians — it’s the need of increasingly rootless, ideas-lite, post-Cold War leftists to find one allegedly black-and-white morality play in which they can be the good guys.

...These guys should seriously consider
a name change: how about
‘Solidarity For Some Palestinians’?

Brendan O'Neill..
jewishnews.co.uk..
11 April '15..

If there were an award for double standards, for getting crazily angry about some people’s behaviour while turning a blind eye to other people’s behaviour, anti-Israel activists would win it every year.

These are people who take to the streets to march and holler whenever an Israeli warplane leaves its hangar, yet who say next to nothing about the militarism of France, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and too many other states to mention.

They bang on endlessly about Israel being an apartheid state, yet through BDS they have created a system of cultural apartheid. In their eyes, culture created by us, or by China, or by Zimbabwe, is fine, but culture produced by them, those nasty Israelis, must be hounded out of theatres and galleries lest it infect us all with its contagious Zionism.

These are activists who cry “Censorship!” when a conference of theirs is pulled, as happened at Southampton University recently. Yet they spend the rest of their time agitating for the No Platforming of Israeli representatives on campus and for the shutting down of pro-Israel university societies. “Free speech! (For nice people like me, not for rotters like you)” — that’s their fantastically hypocritical motto.

And now we can see that their double standards extend even to the people they claim to care for: the Palestinians.

Even here, even on the question of Palestinian suffering, anti-Israel activists only care some of the time. If you’re a Palestinian whose life is made harder by Israeli forces, they’ll share pictures of you, march in the streets for you, write tear-drenched tweets about you. But if you’re a Palestinian under threat from a non-Israeli force, forget about it. You’re on your own.