Actually the problem with the peace process has been too much empathy, not too little - by Jonathan S. Tobin

A call for the Trump administration to show more sympathy for the Palestinian perspective demonstrates the flaw in the thinking of peace advocates.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
03 February '20..

Treating the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as a zero-sum game guarantees that peace can’t be made. The only way to create mutual understanding, and hopefully, a path towards peaceful coexistence is via mutual empathy.

That’s the sort of anodyne sermon that we’ve been hearing for decades from advocates for Middle East peace. While that is something of a cliché, there is also truth to it. People who don’t recognize each other’s common humanity and the legitimacy of their existence aren’t going to be able to compromise and learn to live alongside each other.

Nevertheless, a call for more empathy for the Palestinians from Jodi Rudoren, the new editor of The Forward, is not only wrongheaded; it also illustrates everything that has been mistaken about the efforts of those Americans who have been most devoted to bringing about a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Rudoren is a new edition to the ranks of editors of Jewish publications. She came to the Forward after a long career at The New York Times, including a stint in one of its most difficult and controversial posts. Rudoren served as the Times’ Israel bureau chief from 2012 to 2015. In that role, she became—as was the case with all of her predecessors and successors—the focus of intense interest from media critics (including myself). She was seen as part of a tradition of tendentious Times’ reporting on Israel and for mixing her opinions, which seemed to reflect her affinity for the mindset of the Jewish state’s left-wing political parties, in with her news coverage—a concern that doesn’t apply to her new role as an opinion columnist.

In her most recent column about what she felt were the shortcomings of the Trump administration’s Mideast peace plan, Rudoren resurrects one of the points she often invoked when she was reporting from Israel and claimed that criticism from both sides to the conflict testified to her fairness. In one instance, she was taken to task by a Palestinian official who complained about a piece in which she noted the suffering of a parent of an Israeli soldier who had been killed while defending his country. Even though the soldier had been killed fighting Egypt along the Suez Canal, the Palestinian said that her piece demonstrated a “lack of empathy for Palestinians.”

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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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(Alleged) harassment of journalists as news-management strategy: The Hamas model - by Arnold Roth

...Oh, and did we mention that in rejecting the idea of Hamas harassment, Ms Rudoren of the New York Times confessed she had not been physically present in Gaza at any of the relevant times? What is it that makes some parts of the news reporting industry abandon all good sense and principle when it comes to reporting on murder-minded, thuggish Islamists?

Gaza: Hamas works the news-reporting media

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
22 May '16..

Two summers ago, when war was raging here between the Islamists of Gaza and the IDF, an odd aspect of the way the media was covering events caused us to post here ["11-Aug-14: So did Hamas intimidate reporters or not?" and "13-Aug-14: A lesson about war-time nonsense from the New York Times"].

We were struck - astounded really - by how the then-bureau chief of the New York Times engaged publicly in a stark dismissal of some very serious criticisms of Hamas made by her professional colleagues and others. In fact, the things said at the time by the Foreign Press Association, and utterly rejected by Jodi Rudoren of the New York Times, about how the Islamist terrorists thugs strong-armed their way to changing how the news, and especially the images, of the fighting inside Gaza were covered, were about as serious and consequential as journalistic criticism ever gets.

We said then:

Perhaps in some parallel universe in the future, there will be some seriously critical public review of how it can be that a vast and incredibly influential medium like the New York Times aligns itself with the interests of the child-murdering Hamas... [here]

and we backed up our amazement with some concrete examples.

Other voices, much better informed than we and closer to the events, gave some invaluable context to what the news media did and not do, and what was and was not done them. We're thinking in particular of Matti Friedman, a long-time AP correspondent in the field, who wrote this at around the same time:

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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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Any wonder they believe that the West will hand them Israel on a silver platter?

...It’s not often that one not particularly remarkable article could sum up everything that is wrong with the Middle East and the way Western liberals think about it, but the Rudoren piece does just that. So long as Palestinians get this kind of favorable coverage, it’s little wonder that they persist in their belief that sooner or later the West will hand them Israel on a silver platter.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
23 November '15..

Today (Monday), another Israeli was killed and two more were wounded in a stabbing attack at a gas station by a Palestinian terrorist. On Sunday, another Israeli, a 20-year-old woman, was stabbed at an intersection near where 18-year-old Ezra Schwartz from Sharon, Massachusetts was killed. That attack was one of three assaults by Palestinians on Jewish targets that took place that day in which Israelis defending themselves killed all of the terrorist assailants. How did the New York Times describe it in their initial report on the events of the day published on its website Sunday evening? The headline read as follows: “1 Israeli and 3 Palestinians Killed in the West Bank.” This was a classic example of moral equivalence in which Israeli victims are equated by mainstream media bias with terrorists.

By Monday that headline was changed to: “Israeli Woman and 3 Palestinian Attackers Killed in West Bank.” But before we give the Times too much credit for correcting the prejudice against Israel that was demonstrated in the initial headline, it’s important to note that the story was just as imbalanced as it devoted far more space to information about one of the attackers than the Israeli that was killed. But in spite of that tilt, it also contained some important information the demonstrated the way the “moderate” Palestinian Authority was encouraging violence. In other words, the story was everything that was wrong in the Middle East contained in one bad article.

The instinct to lump in together all those killed in the last two months as Palestinian terrorism surged into what is being called the “stabbing intifada” stems from a belief that what is happening is merely part of a “cycle of violence.” Seen in that way, there are no terrorists or victims, merely two sides that are equally to blame for the problem.

This ignores the fact that the conflict is driven by the Palestinian belief in the illegitimacy of Israel within any borders. That is something that has been made evident by their repeated rejections of peace offers that would have ended the Israeli presence on the West Bank and given them the independent state they say they want. Yet the Palestinians continue to seek out random Jews to kill on the streets and do it in the name of their desire to end an occupation that could have been finished long ago if they were not still obsessed with Israel’s destruction.

It was telling that the Times chose to highlight the death of one of the assailants, 16-year-old Ashrakat Quattanami. She is the daughter of an active member of Islamic Jihad, and Islamist terrorist organization that thinks Hamas is too moderate and is dedicated to the elimination of Israel and its Jewish population. However, the Times merely describe it as “militant group.”

The Times quoted her father at length:

“My daughter went to the Hawara checkpoint today to seek revenge in her own hands against the Israelis who have stolen our land and continue to kill innocent Palestinian people,” Mr. Qattanani, an imam at a neighborhood mosque, said in an interview. “Last night, she was very upset, and said, ‘If I become a martyr, give my organs to a Palestinian who needs them.’”

Mind you, there is no talk of statehood or of the West Bank. Rather merely a generic description of all Israelis as living on “stolen land.”

Yet the author of the piece, Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren, told us nothing about 20-year-old Hadar Buchris, the one Israeli fatality of the day, other than her name, her age and the fact that she was from Safed, a city inside the 1967 lines. Nor did we learn anything about the person Qattanani tried to kill.

But what was of interest was the fact that not just her father’s radical group is lionizing as a martyr and the slain stabber. The Palestinian Authority officially declared her death “a war crime.” She died when an Israeli in a car spotted her chasing an Israeli girl with a knife knocked her down. A soldier then shot her. But both PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party and Hamas now mark the quick-witted driver for death.

Surprise! Jodi Rudoren Turns Palestinian Attacker Into "Boy Scout"

...What line of thinking would inspire a reporter to insert into the story language about this being a "pocketknife, the kind Boy Scouts use"? It is how The New York Times transforms a fact — a Palestinian man caught on video wielding a knife while charging at Israelis — into a story of a Palestinian boy scout, a teen who may or may not have had a knife slain by Israel which may or may not have planted evidence near his body.

Gilead Ini..
CAMERA Snapshots..
28 October '15..




There are many things wrong with this New York Times passage:

Jodi Rudoren outrageously decided not to inform readers that, in fact, there is video footage, captured by an MSNBC cameraman, of the man holding his knife in the air while running toward Israelis. Instead, working within the boundaries of conspiracy theory, she mentions only that Israeli police, after the fact, shared a photo of a knife next to the boy. We discuss that journalistic whitewash here.

But the reporter goes even further. Note the highlighted portion of the text above. The way the newspaper frames it, even if the photo wasn't a nefarious setup by the Israeli police, the "slain teenager" — and it's worth mentioning that The New York Times refers to 19-year-old "men" overwhelming more often than 19-year-old "teenagers" (see update below) — was merely holding a "Boy Scout" knife.

No, it was very much not a Boy Scout knife. This is the image of the knife released by Israeli police.

Jodi Rudoren, Netanyahu exchange blows over NYT coverage

...The ultimate punch: when Rudoren’s press credentials are suddenly so starkly undervalued. Bottom line: a fitting counter-punch by Bibi without any harm to the First Amendment.

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
18 July '15..

Jodi Rudoren, the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, doesn’t like Prime Minister Netanyahu. In fact, she goes apoplectic when they cross paths.

Just read her “news analysis” in the July 17 edition, where she leads off with a smorgasbord of anti-Bibi invectives culled from Israeli anti-Netanyahu commentators. Since the United States and other world powers overrode Netanyahu’s fearsome objections, she gleefully reports, Israeli media have described the Iranian nuclear deal as the prime minister’s “personal failure,” “a stinging failure,” and a “colossal failure.”

And since the Iran deal was announced, she adds in her next paragraph, Netanyahu “has seemed lifeless, gray, even in deep despair during public appearances.” How tragic. Bibi, she notes, had tied his career for more than two decades around Iran, even as he “battered Israel’s critical alliance with the United States.” In other words, he had it coming.

Pow and double-pow.

Yet Rudoren grudgingly concedes in subsequent paragraphs that Netanyahu “in the short run may actually benefit at home,” where Israelis are deeply distrustful of Iran. Still, first and foremost, the anti-Bibi diatribes get front-and-center position.

Unlike Rudoren, the Times’ headline writer is more inclined to give Bibi a break. The headline reads: “News Analysis – Netanyahu May Turn Iran Defeat to his Favor” (page A8).

But in the meantime, Rudoren has done her worst when it comes to Netanyahu.

New York Times Plays 'Fair' in Mideast Reportage

“It is unrealistic to expect Hamas, which the United States and other countries consider a terrorist group, to comply with international law or police itself. But Israel has a duty and should have the desire, to adjust its military policies to avoid civilian casualties and hold those who failed to do so accountable.” The same editorial writer before and during World War II probably would have put greater onus on Churchill than on Hitler in being held responsible for protecting civilians. After all, it would have been “unrealistic” to expect the Nazis to “comply with international law.”

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
24 June '15..

The headline tells it all when it comes to New York Times coverage of the UN Human Rights Council report on the 2014 Gaza war (“Both Sides In Gaza War Are Faulted by U.N. Panel” June 23, page A4.)

For every Hamas terrorist action, Times correspondents Jodi Rudoren and Somini Sengupta are quick to juxtapose some malfeasance on Israel’s part.

How much fairer can you get?

Answer: Plenty.

By putting equivalence above everything else, the Times and the UN report fail to give readers the real crux of what actually happened. They ignore the fact that it was Hamas, not Israel, that triggered the 50-day summer war with incessant rocket barrages on civilian populations in Israel. Had Hamas desisted, there would have been no war.

The Times’ coverage of the Gaza War, with its repeated stretches to treat each party equally, is as if the Allies in World War II had been as culpable as the Japanese and the Germans.

Surprise! NY Times attacks Israel's report on conduct of Gaza War

...Nowhere in her article does Rudoren indicate to readers that these preferred sources, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, pursue anti-Israel agendas. Their views are accepted unconditionally. Which one can’t say about Rudoren’s treatment of the IDF.

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
16 June '15..

Israel is out with a 277-page report on the conduct of last year’s 50-day Gaza war -- by both the IDF and by Palestinian terrorist groups like Hamas. The report concludes that the Israeli military went to extraordinary lengths to spare civilians, while Hamas & Co. deliberately put civilians in the path of military operations. Yet, while the report is based on extensive research and interviews with participants, the New York Times will have none of it. Thus, Jodi Rudoren, its Jerusalem bureau chief, sets out to disparage its findings and undermine its credibility -- in the Times’ news section no less.

Before Rudoren even gets to particulars in the report, she quotes a Hamas spokesman in a telephone interview that the report “has no value and will not work in changing the facts because the Israeli occupation crimes took place in front of the world’s cameras.”

A clear signal by Rudoren to Times readers that delving into the report is a waste of time -- not worth paying any attention to it. After all, Hamas says so.

Immediately after her interview with the Hamas spokesman, Rudoren again brushes the Israeli report aside as essentially worthless. “The Israeli report mostly repeats familiar positions,” she writes in yet another attempt to downgrade Israeli evidence about the IDF’s operational conduct.

Nor is this the only time that she pre-emptively dismisses the report’s contents as value-less.

Surprise! NYT rages against Bibi's pick of Dore Gold for foreign minister

...Never mind that Gold might have good reason to be “hawkish” on Iran, whose ayatollahs are determined to exterminate Israel. Would Rudoren and the Times instead prefer a “dovish” Israeli foreign policy chief prone to turn the other cheek? Apparently so. Israel’s security does not rank high at the New York Times.

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
27 May '15..

In a lengthy May 26 article, Jodi Rudoren, the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, goes apoplectic over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s selection of Dore Gold to run Israel’s foreign ministry.

The headline and the lead paragraph immediately signal to readers that Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, is disastrous for Israel’s diplomacy – “Netanyahu Appoints Hawkish Ally to Run foreign policy” – buttressed by Rudoren’s own depiction of Gold as a Bibi confidant who is “hawkish on Iran and the Palestinian issue.”

Never mind that Gold might have good reason to be “hawkish” on Iran, whose ayatollahs are determined to exterminate Israel. Would Rudoren and the Times instead prefer a “dovish” Israeli foreign policy chief prone to turn the other cheek? Apparently so. Israel’s security does not rank high at the New York Times.

The Death of Adele Biton and The NY Times’ Justification of Lopsided Reporting

...The Society of Professional Journalist's code of ethics calls on journalists, among other things, to recognize their own cultural values and avoid imposing them on readers, to distinguish between advocacy and news reporting, and to give voice to the voiceless. In addition, it urges journalists to be accountable to their readers, clarify and explain news coverage, invite dialogue and encourage readers to voice their grievances about news reporting. Many prominent and respected journalists adhere to this code, even when criticized. And they are better journalists for it. But as long as Rudoren continues to wear blinders, block her ears, and insist that it is not necessary to explore both sides of a conflict in equal depth, non-partisan readers who want to genuinely learn about the situation fully and fairly should continue to avoid the New York Times and its partisan Jerusalem bureau chief.

Ricki Hollander..
CAMERA Media Analyses..
20 February '15..

In March 2013, three-year-old Adele Biton was travelling with her two sisters in a car driven by their mother, when a Palestinian rock-throwing attack caused the car to slam into a truck ahead. Two of the girls suffered moderate wounds, while Adele was left in critical condition, with serious neurological injuries. She underwent extensive treatment in acute and rehabilitation care facilities, but never fully recovered.

Nearly two years later, on Feb. 17, 2015, the pre-schooler died as a result of complications of pneumonia. Her mother told the Israeli newspaperYediot Aharonot that there was no doubt that Adele's illness was part of the progression of her neurological injuries “that complicated her ability to cope with medical issues."

The following day, Voice of Israel's Josh Hasten interviewed New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren. Asked what she knew about Adele, Rudoren responded:

In any society, I suppose, and certainly here, there are certain individual cases among the victims who become somewhat iconic and I think Adele was one of those. She was two years old, critically injured, spent more than a year, maybe a year and a half, in rehab. Many, many articles were written about her. Her parents, her family, captured Israeli attention, so I was aware of that. Obviously, a two-year-old girl critically injured in the conflict is heart-tugging for any observer and because of that, she had become somewhat iconic. That's why we wrote a brief item about her death.

But it was not until after Adele had succumbed to her illness that Jodi Rudoren referred to Adele and the stone throwing attack that had maimed her. The reporter wrote about Adele's death in a 169-word "world briefing" that appeared only in the newspaper's online edition.

Indeed, in a more than 1900-word feature article about Palestinian stone throwers that was published both online ("In a West Bank Culture of Conflict, Boys Wield the Weapon at Hand") and prominently on the front page of the print edition ("My Hobby is Throwing Stones," Aug. 5, 2013), Jodi found no room to mention the attack that had critically injured Adele. Nor did she mention an earlier stone throwing attack that had crushed the skull of 5-year-old Yehuda Shoham, an only child. And her only mention of a similar attack that resulted in the deaths of a young father and his infant son was in passing, presented as hearsay about unnamed victims.

Instead the reporter devoted her feature piece to Palestinian stone throwers' justifications for, and expressions of pride in, their actions, as well as their hardship in being arrested by Israeli police for these activities. At the time, CAMERA posted a sharp media critique about the article, entitled "The New York Times Romanticizes Palestinian Stone Throwers and Ignores Their Victims." In it, Rudoren was criticized for explaining the stone throwing by Palestinians as "pushback against Israel," a "rite of passage," and an "honored act of defiance" while downplaying the impact of this Palestinian "hobby" on its Israeli victims. The critique pointed out that while the reporter emphasized "the futility of stones bouncing off armored vehicles," and interviewed one Israeli who had been frightened but uninjured by stone-throwing attacks, she provided almost no information about the deadlier and more injurious results of such attacks.

Dearest Jodi. Guess What Keeps Palestinian Lovers Apart?

...But the bottom line of this issue is not about Israeli rules. It’s about a Palestinian people and its leadership that has consistently rejected every opportunity for peace including four times in the last 15 years. When the Palestinians are prepared to give up their dream of Israel’s extinction and recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, free passage between peaceful countries won’t be an issue. Until then, Palestinian lovers stuck in the two areas should send their complaints to Fatah and Hamas and not to Israel via the New York Times.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
09 February '15..

Who doesn’t sympathize with the plight of two lovers separated by a heartless bureaucracy? Certainly not Jodi Rudoren, the Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times who, with the assistance of one of the paper’s stringers in Gaza, wrote a story published yesterday in which the star-crossed romance of a Gaza woman and a Nablus man serves to highlight Israeli restrictions on the movement of Palestinians between the Hamas-run strip and the West Bank. The situation of teacher Dalia Shurrab and social media marketer Rashed Sameer Faddah is worthy of sympathy. But as much as the story Rudoren has written casts the Israelis as the villain of the piece, the real culprits are not to be found in the Jewish state. Palestinians who would like to see more liberal travel policies should address their anger to their leaders whose war on Israel is responsible for their inconvenience. Those who would like the borders of these areas to resemble the ones that separate Canada from the United States can’t at the same time support the ongoing war to extinguish the existence of the Jewish state.

There’s no doubt that Shurrab and Faddah appear to be innocent victims of a struggle that has nothing to do with the efforts of two individuals to find happiness. But when you are a citizen of an area ruled by a terrorist group pledged to fight a genocidal terrorist war against your neighbor, is it really fair to cry foul when the government of that country isn’t particularly interested in facilitating your travel?

Palestinians and their foreign supporters apparently think so. They believe that Israel should let Palestinians from Gaza come and go as they please and settle in the West Bank if they like. In a better and more peaceful world, that shouldn’t be a problem. Indeed, if the Palestinian Authority that runs the West Bank and/or the Hamas government in Gaza were ever prepared to make peace with Israel, it might be possible. As Rudoren points out, a commitment to facilitating free travel between the two Palestinian areas was part of the original Oslo Accords. That seems to paint the Israelis as not only hard-hearted but also treaty breakers. But the truth is a little more complicated than that.

Were Israel and the territories as peaceful as the Israelis who helped draft the Oslo Accords assumed they would be once their deal was signed then free passage might make sense. But the reality of Oslo was very different from the “New Middle East” fantasies popularized more than 20 years ago by Shimon Peres and others who championed the accords. Under PA leader and arch terrorist Yasir Arafat, both regions became hotbeds of terror and incitement. Free passage, which was a matter of course during the pre-Oslo period of Israeli rule, was impossible under those circumstances. Once Arafat turned down then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s two offers of statehood and independence in 2000 and 2001 and launched a terrorist war of attrition, it become even less likely. After Hamas seized control of Gaza in a bloody coup in 2007, even Western nations that were not sympathetic to Israel agreed that the area had to be kept in quarantine lest the terrorists exploit travel to further their bloody ends.

Who Might Ask Whether It's Misguided to Fight for Jewish Rights?

...Indeed, who is the only source Rudoren can produce to justify the headline about the Law Center’s efforts being “misguided?” The Israeli attorney who had been defending the Palestinian Authority in cases relating to its financial support for terrorists described her as a “nuisance.” I’m sure his clients and others who believe those who commit terrorism against Jewish Americans and Israelis feel the same way. But it’s hard to see why anyone else would view her activities in that same light.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
25 January '15..

Lawfare is the term for the practice of employing legal proceedings to wage a kind of war on a country or cause. For the most part, the State of Israel has been on the receiving end of this effort as non-governmental organizations and others purporting to support the cause of human rights have attempted to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist and to self-defense with specious efforts to arraign before the bar of justice. But not everybody in Israel believes the best way to counter these attacks is to play defense or simply ignore it. Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner founded Shurat HaDin—the Israel Law Center in 2004 to use the law to not only work for the rights of Jewish victims of terrorism but also to make the terrorists, state sponsors, and enablers in the business world pay for their crimes. For this she was rewarded with an article profiling her activities in yesterday’s New York Times that posed the question in its headline as to whether her work was “misguided,” a clear indication of the opinion of the paper’s editors. But that verdict can only be sustained if you believe those who support terrorism deserve legal impunity.

The piece by Jodi Rudoren does provide us with yet another tortured food metaphor from the paper’s Jerusalem bureau chief. In describing her relentless efforts to keep probing legal foes for weaknesses and to adopt the best strategies, Darshan-Leitner made an analogy to baking challah for the Sabbath. Rudoren uses that one line to attempt to gain some insight on her subject’s career but it doesn’t work.

Even less convincing is Rudoren’s effort to put down Darshan-Leitner as either a worthless publicity hound/profiteer or an impediment to the peace process. Indeed, who is the only source Rudoren can produce to justify the headline about the Law Center’s efforts being “misguided?” The Israeli attorney who had been defending the Palestinian Authority in cases relating to its financial support for terrorists described her as a “nuisance.” I’m sure his clients and others who believe those who commit terrorism against Jewish Americans and Israelis feel the same way. But it’s hard to see why anyone else would view her activities in that same light.

Surprise! NYT uses funeral of 4 French Jews to bash Netanyahu

...Which prompted another reader to remark: “With Jews and Israel under vicious attack, and especially at this time, that Rudoren, supported by the Times, picks this obscure story for publicity, is a disgrace. Rudoren could have picked any of 100 stories favorable to Jews or Israel as a sign of solidarity with the Jews of France. But no, Rudoren searches for a story that neither reflects Jews nor Israel to make both look bad. How pathetic she is, how awful.”

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
15 January '15..

It’s supposed to be a New York Times article about the funeral in Israel of four French Jews killed at a Paris kosher supermarket (“Emotion Mixes With Politics as 4 Killed at Paris Market are Buried in Jerusalem,” Jan. 14, page 8).

But leave it to Jodi Rudoren, the Times’ Jersualem bureau chief, to convert it into an all-out tirade against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

What riles Rudoren is that Netanyahu committed two great sins – he represented Israel on an equal basis with leaders of other countries in the front row of the massive Paris march against terror, and he had the effrontery to suggest to French Jews that they would be safer by moving to Israel.

Netanyahu’s “open arms” invitation to all French Jews, Rudoren writes, “set off a backlash over the weekend.” Intolerable, as far as she’s concerned.

But that’s just the start of her diatribe.

Take NY Times Rudoren’s ‘Miracle’ with a Cup of Salt

...While I’m sure the soup was good, the story that went with it should have struck any journalist worth his or her salt as a crock or at least in need of some heavy seasoning with the facts about Palestinian actions during the intifada if it was going to be written up. But not Jodi Rudoren. She’s as green as the day she arrived in Israel in May 2012 to take up her post. That would be an embarrassment for any foreign correspondent, let alone a Times bureau chief. Readers should keep this in mind whenever they look at her non-food or holiday-related coverage in the paper.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
24 December '14..

When inexperienced foreign correspondents arrive in Israel, one of the rites of passage tends to be their being suckered into writing a heartwarming Palestinian story intended to give Israel a black eye. However, the best indication of their mettle as a journalist is not so much whether Palestinians sources/fixers inveigle them into producing one of these atrocities as whether they learn from the experience and try not to get hooked into another obvious piece of pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel puffery. Judged by this standard, New York Times Jerusalem Bureau chief Jodi Rudoren must be considered a dismal failure. Though she has been in the country for two and a half years, Rudoren has just produced a stereotypical holiday piece about the conflict published today in the paper that should embarrass even the most raw rookie scribe.

The article, tabbed as “Letter From the Middle East,” is titled “An Open Door Beckons in the West Bank.” It concerns the experiences of Khadra Zreineh, a Palestinian woman who hosts foreigners and those living temporarily in Israel as part of what Rudoren describes as “off-the-beaten-track tourist experiences often focused on food.” Apparently Zreineh served up some nice stories along with her home made freekeh soup about life in the town of Beit Jala during the second intifada where she lives in what she dubs “the house of the open door,” where both Jews and Arabs have always been welcome.

One in particular entranced Rudoren who made it the centerpiece of her article. It concerned Zreineh’s experience during Easter of 2002 when the area was under curfew as Israeli troops sought to capture Palestinian terrorists who had taken refuge in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. The terrorists held out in the shrine for 39 days secure in the knowledge that Israeli troops would respect the site’s sanctity. In the end, they were allowed to leave unharmed for exile in Gaza or Europe. During the siege, which took place during a time of intense fighting in the West Bank as armed Palestinian cadres waged war against Israel, local residents were given brief periods to leave their homes to get supplies. But after 34 days, Zreineh and some friends decided to defy the curfew and go to church. Instead of stopping them, an Israeli tank crew let them do as they liked and then waited for them to escort them safely home after the service. Zreineh considered this action an “Easter miracle” but then found out that one of the soldiers knew her son from earlier more peaceful times and had been in her home before.

That’s very nice and would, at least on its face, seem to confirm the idea that the only thing that is needed to end the conflict between Jews and Arabs is more contact and understanding with some good food thrown in. But there are some problems with the narrative and the way that Rudoren retold it that tell us more about Rudoren’s poor skills as a journalist than about what’s wrong with the Middle East.

Jodi Rudoren, Journalism and the Key Fallacy That Explains Media Ignorance

...The ignorance of reporters about the subjects they cover is an ongoing problem, and it’s especially egregious when the subject turns to religion. Yet often when reporters take their base of knowledge of a subject and arrogantly assume it’s all they’ll ever need to know, they at least know something–anything, even basic information–about the issue. That’s not the case with Rudoren. Her mistakes include those that are disproved by merely looking at a map, for instance. Somewhere along the line, liberal reporters and editors decided that the greater the depth and breadth of criticism of their work, the better they assumed it to be. This attitude has produced the work of Jodi Rudoren as its inevitable consequence. And it’s how, seemingly against all odds, coverage of Israel is still getting worse. The hope is that Rudoren represents the media hitting bottom, but I fear we’re not there yet.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
21 November '14..

When I began my career as a young reporter straight out of college, it became immediately clear to me how much I didn’t know. That realization almost certainly saved my career because it taught me a lesson I later heard best expressed by Brit Hume: “Fairness is not an attitude. Fairness is a skill.” My editors took journalistic ethics seriously, and the reporters at our company took notice. When reporters in our newsroom got criticism over accusations of bias, they gave them appropriate consideration. They never would have worn them as a badge of honor. They never would have acted as unethically and unprofessionally, in other words, as Jodi Rudoren.

The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief has established a record of not just inaccurate reporting but the kind of mistakes that should never get through layers of editors and fact checkers. This week on Twitter I criticized Rudoren’s latest batch of advocacy journalism for its many mistakes and also for how easily those mistakes could be prevented by going through the normal reporting process. Rudoren has responded to the Washington Examiner, and her reaction is quite telling. It boils down to: nothing will change, because she refuses to know what she doesn’t know.

The Examiner tried to reach out to me for comment, the request never came through, and so the article went up without it. It’s worth responding now, especially since Rudoren’s comments are so revealing and are themselves a thorough indictment of mainstream journalistic ethics. Here is the crux of her response to the Examiner:

“Broadly speaking, most of the criticism of our coverage, and it is immense, is not rooted in the values of mainstream journalism, but is done from the prism of advocacy. Frequently, these critics ignore the stories or parts of stories that don’t fit with their pre-determined conclusion of our bias (and we have pretty much equal accusations of biases on both sides),” New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren told the Washington Examiner.

“They often try to subject stories or sentences to some kind of scoring system — good for Israel, bad for Israel — which is problematic because the stories, and the subjects, are much more complex and nuanced than that,” Rudoren added.

It’s impossible to notice that Rudoren’s comments prove the criticism of her to be completely correct. And she is making it clear she refuses to learn more, because she regards that learning process itself as a concession to her critics. Out of sheer pride, Rudoren will remain uninformed.

The Insatiable Need to Bash Israel at the NY Times

...Her piece only demonstrates how far she’s prepared to stretch her copy so as to blacken the Jewish state. Reflexively, whenever she tackles Gaza woes, she feels an immediate need to brand Israel. At bottom, for Rudoren and the Times, Israel has no right of self-defense.

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
27 October '14..

Just when you think that Jodi Rudoren, the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, finally filed an article devoid of Israel bashing, it turns out it’s not quite so.

At issue is a piece in the Times’ Oct. 26 edition which exposes mishandling of Gaza reconstruction work --- with building materials, including cement, steel and gravel, piling up in warehouses while thousands of Gaza families are desperate to fix their homes (“Aid Is In, but Gazans Can only Look at Supplies” page 4)

An initial, cursory reading of Rudoren’s piece suggests that, for a change, she may be putting the monkey on the back of Gaza’s Hamas rulers. After all, she acknowledges that Israel has allowed huge quantities of construction hardware into Gaza. So one would assume that Israel is free and clear now. Presumably, it has done its work, while Hamas is shortchanging its own people. Actually, this Palestinian scandal gets even worse. Rudoren also reports that there is some reconstruction work under way, but it’s only for studios that broadcast Hamas propaganda.

If there still are reconstruction woes in Gaza, the fault presumably lies with its rulers -- not with Israel, one would think. Well, not quite.

Because a closer reading of Rudoren’s piece brings to the fore another thing -- several pokes at Israel. Not once, not twice, but five times no less.

Here is how Rudoren stretches her copy to malign Israel after all:

Imagine if the New York Times knew how to sincerely apologize

...But to be honest, what prompted us to write now is not to quote Arab reports to you but rather a fierce desire to hear you say something contrite. Like this for instance:
"Yes, friends, for a moment my colleagues and I here in Israel's capital and in our company's editorial suites in Manhattan, did indeed lose our moral compasses again last night. But we're better now...

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
24 October '14..



Jodi Rudoren
New York Times Jerusalem Bureau
Jerusalem, Israel

Dear Mrs Rudoren

We are writing to you for the first time. It's about something quite shocking you published on your Twitter account this morning.

You Tweeted about an article penned by one of your Jerusalem NYT colleagues. It relates to a sickening attack - one that epitomizes what most people think about when they call an act 'cowardly' - by a violent Palestinian Arab man, Abdel Rahman Al-Shaludi, with a demonstrated commitment to terror and violence, driving a car. But someone in your newspaper tacked the words "police say" onto the headline. So reasonable people are going to know that there's no compelling reason to believe it was what the police say at all.

But what we know is Al-Shaludi very deliberately, and at devastatingly high speed, veered off Jerusalem's Route 1 on which he was traveling on Wednesday evening and drove directly into a cluster of ordinary Israelis standing on the platform of a Jerusalem Light Rail stop, the public transport system that makes it so simple - finally - for Arab Jerusalemites to head into the center of town comfortably, cheaply and often, which they do in large numbers.

The unsuspecting Israelis were mowed down like skittles. All, that is, apart from one, a tiny, pretty girl baby of three months old. She was flung violently into the air, we heard, but what was done to her tiny body is irrelevant to us at this point. Her grieving parents buried her last night.

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As Expected, All the Anti-Israel News That Fits

...It’s little surprise that Hamas would attempt to produce new Pallywood productions designed to harm Israel’s reputation at a time when the group’s cynical decision to launch a war and to conduct terror operations should be undermining any foreign support for their cause. But it is shocking that professional journalists that take umbrage at even the slightest accusations of bias lobbed in their direction would decide to print a story that is nothing more than a Hamas press release.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
25 August '14..

Bashing the New York Times’s coverage of the Middle East is a full-time occupation for some, but today the grey lady published a story out of Gaza that had to make even its most loyal readers wince. In a summer when much of the press, and in particular the Times Jerusalem Bureau chief Jodi Rudoren, seemed to disgrace themselves by their lack of coverage of Hamas terror activities in Gaza, today’s piece marked a new low that is likely to reinforce the paper’s unfortunate reputation for anti-Israel bias.

The story concerns what the headline says was a teenager’s “ordeal as a captive of Israelis.” In it, 17-year-old Ahmed Jamal Abu Raida claims that he was captured by Israeli forces during the recent fighting in Gaza and then threatened, beaten, tortured, used as a human shield, and then forced to search for terror tunnels. But, as the article, which appears under the bylines of Times stringer Fares Akram and Rudoren, related, there are some problems with his story. Despite the detailed narrative provided by Abu Raida, he has no proof of any of it. The teenager couldn’t so much as show the Times correspondents a single bruise. Nor did his family take pictures of his terrible state when he was returned to them after his release from custody. They also say they disposed of the clothing he wore even though it might have bolstered his story or provided evidence that his story was true.

Oh, and one more thing about his family. Abu Raida is not your stereotypical poor Gazan kid. His father is, in fact, a high-ranking official in the Hamas government of Gaza.

Now it is entirely possible that a young Palestinian with close ties to Hamas who was captured in the area where terror tunnels were found had nothing to do with any terrorist activity and may have been roughly treated by Israeli soldiers. Indeed, the fact that Abu Raida was released after a relatively short time in Israeli hands indicated that the Israelis felt that he was not a combatant.

But the question here is not so much whether we believe the teenager has embellished the story of his time in Israeli hands to appear like a greater victim/hero in the eyes of his family and other Palestinians or if his allegations are a concerted attempt by his father’s colleagues to put forward another false smear of the nation they seek to destroy. The real question is why the publication that still deems itself America’s newspaper of record would choose to go to print with a story that it admits it cannot independently verify and whose source is, to put it mildly, not someone who could be considered an objective or reliable witness where Israel is concerned.

You don’t have to have to be an expert on the Middle East or an experienced journalist to understand the reason why Hamas and a pro-Palestinian NGO brought Abu Raida forward with his tale of wicked Israelis insulting Allah and threatening to let dogs tear him apart. After several weeks of Israelis pointing out that Hamas was using the population of Gaza as human shields, the terror group and its allies were desperate to come up with a counter story that would reverse the narrative and make it appear as if the Israel Defense Forces were using Palestinians in this manner.

What was going on with the press in Gaza?

...But the frustrating thing about this situation is not just that the foreign press was forced to tell only part of the story that was happening in Gaza. It is that most of them seem to think there was nothing wrong with their coverage. Indeed, many seem not to have needed a talking-to from Hamas thugs in order to agree with al-Mudallal that the only proper thing to do in Gaza for a journalist was to take as many pictures of injured Palestinian civilians while ignoring the fact that they were put in harm’s way by terrorists shooting and tunneling from within their midst, including the vicinity of schools, hospitals and mosques.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
15 August '14..

Yesterday, the spokeswoman for the Hamas government in Gaza let the shoe drop. Isra al-Mudallal told a Lebanese television station that the Islamist group routinely intimidated foreign journalists in efforts to “persuade” them to stop trying to take pictures of rocket launches or Hamas fighters.

This admission jives with the complaint issued earlier this week by the Foreign Press Association about Hamas intimidation and interference with reporters in Gaza. Indeed, it explains a lot about the fact that, as I noted last week, throughout the four weeks of fighting, the hordes of foreign reporters that flooded the strip failed to produce a single video of the thousands of rockets shot at the Jewish state or of the armed Hamas cadres that were fighting the Israel Defense Force. Indeed, the first videos of Hamas terrorist activity launches only came in the waning days of the conflict and were released by Finnish and Indian TV only after their reporters had left Gaza? Until then, the only videos coming out of Gaza were those that bolstered the Palestinian narrative about Israeli attacks on civilians as pictures of dead children played in an endless loop on cable news stations.

Yet when put to the question about what was going on in Gaza, most members of the foreign press weren’t very forthcoming about what was, admittedly, a difficult problem. Some claimed they never saw a Hamas fighter or that a massive force numbering thousands operating in what we were endlessly told was a tiny and densely populated area operated out of sight. Others denied the charge of intimidation and claimed to have not seen any evidence of Hamas using civilians as human shields even though they

While none of those who knuckled under to Hamas intimidation should be nominated for any awards for journalistic integrity, let alone courage, it’s easy to sympathize with their plight. Hamas is a terrorist organization whose members have no scruples about violence. It plays for keeps and reporters in areas under their control who don’t get with the program do run a very real risk of never seeing their homes and families again.

A lesson about war-time nonsense from the NY Times

...And a final thought about the danger to which Jodi Rudoren refers: could she have meant the danger that the news organization whose Jerusalem bureau she heads might potentially be excluded from future news-reporting opportunities in which Hamas or some other arm of Jihad International is engaged? For some, that would certainly qualify as a war crime.

Women, children: Gaza war images [Image Source]

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
13 August '14..

Two days ago, we wrote here ["11-Aug-14: So did Hamas intimidate reporters or not? Seems to depend on whose Tweet stream you believe"] about an odd situation in which the organization that represents locally-based reporters here in Israel complained publicly and bitterly about Hamas intimidation (and worse) of their members in the Gaza Strip over the past month while the local New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief seemed to be saying via Twitter that the media people with whom she was speaking thought this was "nonsense".

Today in Haaretz, Matthew Kalman ["Foreign press divided over Hamas harassment"] takes a closer look.

When Jodi Rudoren, Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times, read Monday’s statement from the Foreign Press Association in Israel and the Palestinian territories, she couldn’t believe her eyes. The association, representing some 480 resident correspondents and hundreds more visiting Israel/Palestine each year, protested “in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month." The FPA said it knew of journalists who were “harassed, threatened or questioned over stories or information they have reported through their news media or by means of social media” and accused Hamas of “trying to put in place a ‘vetting’ procedure that would, in effect, allow for the blacklisting of specific journalists.”

Not content with calling the Foreign Press Association's claims "nonsense", Jodi Rudoren now says (according to Haaretz) in an email exchange with the FPA that the statement it released is "dangerous". We are trying to get clarification about whose lives are endangered by it.

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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. Check-it out!
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Equivalent to what?

...Ostensibly her piece was scrupulously symmetric. But that doesn’t make it fair. By choosing to write about the two mothers in the one feature Rudoren was implying a moral equivalency. The online editors helped tip this into an imbalance by running the photo of only one grieving mother under the headline. To find the photo of the woman whose son was kidnapped (and, we now know, killed) the online reader had to go into the accompanying slide show.

Liat Collins..
Columnist/JPost..
03 July '14..

I didn’t so much get dragged into an argument on moral equivalency this week as jump into it in a moment of weakness. It was one of those Facebook debates which remind me why I avoided joining the social media for so long. Perhaps I wasn’t so much weak as angry. I had read the same article earlier in the day and not been irritated enough to comment. But when a former colleague shared The New York Times piece by Jodi Rudoren titled “After West Bank Kidnapping, 2 Mothers Embody a Divide,” posting it on June 30, a few hours after the news that the bodies of the three teenagers for whom I had literally been praying had been found, I went from numb to incensed.

Along with most of the country, I had spent the previous 18 days consumed with worry for the fate of three teenagers I’d never met – Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah, kidnapped and murdered as they hitched a lift home from their high school and yeshiva studies.

My response was actually aimed at my Facebook friend who’d described the feature as “excellent.”

I don’t want to become a member of the automatically bash-the-New-York-Times brigade – or the always-bash-any-journalist brigade for that matter. Even columnists I don’t generally like occasionally have something worth considering to say. Why deny myself a chance of discovering something interesting by ruling out everything they write? Rudoren’s piece gave voice to two mothers – Rachel Fraenkel, whose 16-year-old son Naftali was still missing at the time she was interviewed, and Aida Abdel Aziz Dudeen, whose 15-year-old son Muhammad was fatally shot when he joined a group hurling stones at IDF soldiers participating in the search for the three abducted teens in the village of Dura, near the spot where the kidnappers abandoned and burned the vehicle they had used.

“Ms. Fraenkel and Ms. Dudeen share little aside from deep religiosity and empty beds where their sons should be. But both have been thrust into conspicuous roles in their side-by-side societies, reflecting the conflict’s human costs,” wrote Rudoren.

She studiously tried to be fair to both women and came across as sympathetic to both mothers and sad at the loss and pain in the ongoing conflict.

And here lies the crux of the problem. Ostensibly her piece was scrupulously symmetric. But that doesn’t make it fair. By choosing to write about the two mothers in the one feature Rudoren was implying a moral equivalency. The online editors helped tip this into an imbalance by running the photo of only one grieving mother under the headline. To find the photo of the woman whose son was kidnapped (and, we now know, killed) the online reader had to go into the accompanying slide show.