Latest New York Times anti-Israel op-ed proves yet again its bias

...By allowing these statements to be included in an op-ed, the New York Times is complicit in spreading lies. In a way it is more insidious, because the incidental mention of these false anti-Israel talking points like "ethnic cleansing," "apartheid" and "right of return" gives the casual reader the impression that these statements must be true since the NYT allowed them to be published. Fact checking should be at least as important in op-eds as in news articles. And the NYT has failed yet again.

Elder of Ziyon..
04 April '16..

Daniel Patrick Moynihan is famous for saying "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

This goes doubly so for New York Times op-eds.

Today's case in point is an op-ed written by Omar Zahzah, "a Ph.D. student in comparative literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is on Twitter." (It is part of an online debate about whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism, which really is not the question.)

The NYT doesn't bother to mention that Zahzah is also a former president of the Students for Justice in Palestine UCLA. His activism on behalf of an organization that is dedicated to destroying the Jewish state may be more relevant.

Now, what does this graduate student have to say that is so critical for NYT readers to know?

It is a collection of straw men, half-truths and lies.

(Read Full Post)

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.

.

Short-Term Memory, Haaretz, Abbas, Israel and Yarmouk Refugees

...Does Haaretz have any words to spare on Abbas' death wish for his own people, whose entrance into the West Bank and Gaza he has rejected? Or was all of its righteous indignation about the welfare of the Yarmouk refugees spent on exhorting Israel to put aside politics to try to help the refugees, meanwhile ignoring that Israel had tried to do just that?

Tamar Sternthal...
CAMERA Snapshots..
13 April '15..

"Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is trying to aid the besieged Palestinians by creating secure escape routes from the camp," a Haaretz editorial last week praised the Palestinian leader for supposedly trying to assist Palestinian refugees residing in the Syrian Yarmouk refugee camp ("Politics aside: Israel must help Yarmouk's Palestinian refugees"). Haaretz simultaneously called upon Israel:

Israel must do its part in this international effort. It should sit down with Abbas to evaluate ways and means of helping these refugees, some of whom are related, very closely in some cases, to Arabs in Israel.

Among other things, Israel could offer Abbas the possibility of absorbing some of the refugees into the Palestinian Authority, defray some of the costs involved and provide medical services to those who manage to come. Political considerations and disputes with the PA should be set aside at this time. This is a humanitarian task of the first order that Israel cannot shirk.

Haaretz contributor Oudeh Basharat today echoes the sentiment that Israel must make an effort to assist the Palestinians of Yarmouk ("Why Doesn't Israel Help Palestinians in Yarmouk?"):

Why doesn’t Israel coordinate with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Israeli Arab leadership to absorb Yarmouk refugees in the PA-controlled territories and among Israeli Arabs, as was suggested in the Haaretz editorial on Thursday (“Help Yarmouk’s refugees,” April 9)?

Instead of running to the end of the world to show the beautiful face of Israel, extend a hand to your neighbor. Learn something from Jordan, a country that has no moral or political obligation to Syria yet has already absorbed more than a million refugees from there.

Newsflash to Haaretz: Over a year ago, it was the Palestinian leader, Abbas, who refused to put politics aside and agree to Israel's conditional acceptance of 150,000 Palestinians refugees from Syria into West Bank and Gaza so long as they gave up the "right of return" to Israel. As the Associated Press reported on Jan. 28, 2013:

New York Times Indicts Israel's Democracy... Again

SC..
CAMERA Snapshots..
18 January '13..

On January 17, on page A3, you might have seen yet another in the long line of articles in The New York Times questioning Israel’s democracy. Jodi Rudoren’s “As Israeli Vote Nears, Arab Apathy Is a Concern” was only into its fourth paragraph when the reporter stated:

With Israel heading to the polls on Tuesday, the two intensifying sources of apathy are raising new concerns here over the health of Israeli democracy. Experts say a social media campaign to boycott the election and a growing frustration with Arab lawmakers’ focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rather than local concerns like crime, poverty and unemployment, threaten to depress Arab turnout below 50 percent.

A social media campaign by Arabs aimed at Arabs is not a sign that Israel’s democracy is sick. It is evidence of the freedom of political speech enjoyed by Israeli Arabs. And a frustration with ineffective politicians is again not a symptom of a weak democracy. It’s the universal condition of voters. The thesis of the article is that voter turnout among the Arab minority might dip below 50 percent and this is evidence that Israel’s democracy is under threat.

Well then, the United States must be in a pickle. According to the Center for Voting and Democracy:

The Media - Whose Watchdogs are They?

Moshe Feiglin..
jewishisrael.org..
24 Cheshvan, 5773..
(Nov. 9, '12)..


It is morning and my car glides down the mountains of the Shomron into the smog of greater Tel Aviv. Another crazy day of running for the primaries is about to begin. My cell phone rings. A young, determined voice is on the other end.

"Shalom, this is so and so from the news website, ynet."

"Shalom."

"I am writing an article about donations to the candidates in the primaries. I wanted you to confirm a certain fact. "

"Go ahead."

"I see that you received a donation from a woman by the name of Nitzah Kahane."

"OK."

"Is it true that Nitzah Kahane is the daughter in law of the late Rabbi Kahane?"

Maybe I hadn't yet completely awakened. Perhaps I was suffering from lack of sleep and loads of pressure during the campaign – but that question peeled a thick layer of politically correct right off my psyche.

"Oh," I answered the young reporter. "You probably want to show your readers that women support Feiglin."

"No", the man answered dryly.

Gordon - Lies Propagated out of Ignorance

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary/Contentions..
15 February '12..

Michael Rubin offered a shocking example yesterday of the kind of warped analysis that results when a journalist “goes native” by adopting the biases of the country in which he is stationed. I agree this can be a serious problem when diplomats, journalists and other international officials spend too long in a given country, but I’m no less concerned by the opposite problem: Frequent rotations mean journalists and diplomats have no incentive to develop real expertise in any foreign country. The result is they are often parachuted in with no knowledge of the local languages, history or other information needed to actually understand what’s going on, leaving them dependent on local “fixers” – who may well be pursuing their own agendas.

This point was brought home to me last Friday, when I happened to have dinner at the home of a friend whose eldest son is doing his army service. He had recently returned from a stint in Hebron, and related the following story:

An Israeli soldier at a checkpoint had asked a Palestinian, in Hebrew, to show some identification. An observer from the Temporary International Presence in Hebron was standing nearby, along with a local Palestinian translator, as the observer speaks neither Hebrew nor Arabic. The translator duly explained, in English, that the soldier had asked the Palestinian for his ID – then added the soldier had threatened to beat him up if he didn’t produce it.

The TIPH observer had no way of knowing this “threat” was the product of the translator’s imagination rather than the truth; he was utterly dependent on his translator. Nor would it have made much difference had my friend’s son disputed the translator’s account (which he couldn’t due to army regulations aimed at avoiding confrontations with the observers): In a classic “he said, she said” situation, the overseas visitor would naturally believe his regular translator rather than an unknown Israeli soldier. So the nonexistent threat will doubtless be duly included in the observer’s report, one more in a string of lies promulgated over the years by foreigners who may be genuinely well-meaning, but are irretrievably hampered by their own ignorance.

Kiryat Arba makes the News!

Presspectiva Prompts Yediot Achronot Correction

CAMERA
Middle East Issues
23 October '11




http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=10&x_article=2138

Presspectiva, CAMERA's Hebrew-language Web site, has prompted a correction on an Op-Ed in the Israeli (Hebrew) daily Yediot Achronot, which had falsely accused Kiryat Arba residents of regularly shooting their Palestinian neighbors. CAMERA's English translation of the error and correction follow:

Error (Yediot Achronot, Asaf Gefen, Op-Ed, 9/23/11): Although it isn't clear if this [funding from the Ministry of the Development of the Negev and the Galil for a new cultural center in Kiryat Arba] is because Kiryat Arba is in the Negev or because the residents of the place have a practice of shooting their neighbors with a Galil. [A Galil is an Israeli-made semi-automatic machine gun.] 

Correction (10/14/11): Contrary to what may have been understood from a previous column, the residents of Kiryat Arba do not have the practice of shooting their Palestinian neighbors.

CAMERA and Presspectiva commend Yediot on its clarification, and note that it follows a recent correction regarding a Ha'aretz Op-Ed which had similarly and falsely charged residents of the Anatot of regular attacks on Palestinians and Israeli activists.

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.
.

A Terrorist's Guide to Improving Israel's Media Coverage

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
23 June '10


When you're in a competition and you're losing, one of the first thing to do is to study what your opponent is doing and copy him. In this case Israel is competing for good media coverage with the terrorists. And the terrorists are winning. And if the media likes them so much, maybe it's time to start doing what they do.

1. Get Good Media Coverage By Excluding Bad Media Coverage

Say that two movies will be coming out next week. One of those movies has studio which bans all critics who have spoken unfavorably about it from seeing it. The other movie welcomes all reviewers. When the final numbers are tallied, which movie do you think will have the best reviews? The one that didn't screen the movie for any critics who were not favorably disposed toward it. Sure the other movie might claim that its favorable reviews were honest. And that and a dime will buy you a cup of coffee.

Now say that these two studios keep doing this for 10 years, and that they're the only game in town. Eventually just to be able to do their jobs, critics will almost always positively review movies from the studio that bars critics, and almost always negatively review the movies from the other studio to stay on the good side of the first studio. That is because selecting for optimal results will produce them.

Free societies "screen" for all critics. Totalitarian ones only play to supportive audiences. That is why they get the better publicity than free societies. Journalistic integrity is supposed to make up the difference by telling the truth to the public. When it doesn't, then the journalists are functioning willingly as tools of totalitarian regimes. And maybe it's time to give them the boot.

If Israel wants the same supportive coverage that Fatah and Hamas get, it needs to play by their rules. Press credentials would then go to those who provide positive coverage. Those reporters who want to take pictures of wall graffiti and stage photos of Muslim children throwing stones at Israeli tanks need not apply. If the New York Times or NBC News can't find anyone willing to play by those rules, the way they do in Gaza and Ramallah, then they can stay home and they won't be able to do their jobs.

The mainstream media will be outraged, you say. There will be even more negative coverage. As if there isn't heaps of it now. And what will the negative media coverage be of? Reporters forced to stay home. Foreign correspondents who have to cover an election in Hungary, instead of eating caviar in a Jerusalem hotel and writing vicious articles about Jewish Middle Eastern refugees living in East Jerusalem. Haaretz reporters will have to move to London to write biting columns in the Guardian about how racist the country they used to live in, is. Before they move on to the inevitable theater reviews and finally begin writing ad copy for insurance agencies. Oh the pathos, the pity. No one will care.

(Read full article)

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.
.

Media, Academia Destroying Themselves Over Israel

Institutions are crumbling as the lies needed to uphold the Israel narrative become too much to bear.


Barry Rubin
pajamasmedia.com
15 June '10

The irrational slander and hatred of Israel is not destroying Israel. It is destroying the institutions — media and academic, especially — being driven to madness by this obsessive irrationality and decline from their own proper standards.

Like an oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, the number of lies, logical fallacies, concealments, and strategic misconceptions necessary to make Israel look bad has grown so large that it threatens the health of the media and intelligentsia.

For in their assaults on Israel, these particular news media — of course, not in all they do nor in the work of all who report for them — have left behind professional ethics, rationality, and their own credibility. Political correctness has eclipsed factual correctness, and the purpose of some newspapers has been redefined from reporting the news to merely reporting the news that furthers the political agenda of editors and journalists.

The above, of course, is strenuously denied by those who embody such behavior, though it is of no surprise to those who are reading these words. And in this growing gap, the former lose credibility and the latter lose respect for what should be one of the main pillars of Western democracy and defense against the ideologies of dictatorship.

There is no institution that is more clearly typical of this malady than the once-respected and now justly often-ridiculed New York Times. Only the Times could donate a huge space to Tony Judt, a man without qualification to discuss the Middle East, claiming that the idea Israel is being delegitimized was a propaganda myth created by the Netanyahu government … while Judt daily delegitimizes Israel.

(Read full article)

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.
.

'Paranoia from Press Harms Israel'

Yoni Kempinski
israelnationalnews.com
01 June '10

Matthew Kalman, a Jerusalem based foreign correspondent, spoke at the Anti-Defamation League's conference in Tel Aviv about Israel and the foreign media.

As seen in the following video, Kalman explained that there are three "P"s that affect the foreign news coverage of events in Israel – policy, parachutes, and paranoia. Policy refers to Israeli policies that are sometimes not understood or accepted by the foreign correspondents. The word 'parachutes' refers to journalists who 'drop' into Israel without even knowing the language. Paranoia is how Kalman refers to the attitude of the Israeli authorities towards the media, and he explained how this paranoia was felt during the most recent events of the Gaza flotilla.



Summing up the conference, Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, came to Israel's defense in response to Matthew Kalman's complaints.

Matthew Kalman has been a foreign correspondent and filmmaker based in Jerusalem since 1998. He has reported for TIME, Newsweek, the Boston Globe, London Sunday Times, and other many newspapers, as well as PBS television in the United States, Channel 4 News in Britain and CTV in Canada. He is a frequent contributor to radio news programs in Canada and Britain.

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.
.