‘Ensuring accuracy’ at the BBC Monitoring Jerusalem office? - by Hadar Sela

...That obviously does not bode well for BBC Monitoring’s commitment to “ensuring accuracy”, for consumers of supposedly impartial BBC Middle East related content or for clients (including the UK government) relying on the information it provides to help them make “well-informed decisions”.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
01 September '17..

...BBC Monitoring is the partially licence fee funded department that translates open source traditional and new media from around the world and describes its mission as being “to provide news, information and insight to BBC journalists, UK government customers and commercial subscribers, allowing users to make well-informed decisions”.

Earlier this year BBC Monitoring advertised some vacancies in its Jerusalem office, including a position titled Digital Journalist that was described as follows:

(Continue to 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. 

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No Room for Palmyra but CNN Claims Jerusalem’s Old City Endangered

...So long as Israel maintains control over the Old City, the free access to its holy sites for all that only began in 1967 will be preserved along with its precious treasures and archeological excavations such as those being undertaken just outside the walls at the historic City of David. The only possible threat to its existence would be if the Old City were to fall into the hands of the Palestinian Authority, which has a history of allowing Jewish sites under its control to be destroyed, such as the Tomb of Joseph in Nablus and an ancient synagogue in Jericho. Those who treat a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict that would mandate Jerusalem’s partition must understand that such demands are tantamount to ensuring the destruction of World Heritage sites. But in the meantime, ignorant or malevolent media cheerleaders for Palestinian propagandists, such as those at CNN, will continue to spread libels about Israel rather than focusing on the real threat to ancient Jerusalem and completely ignoring the depredations of Islamist vandals.

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

The rise of ISIS has been a tragedy for historical sites in the Middle East. Just as the Taliban destroyed monumental historical artworks in Afghanistan in the 1990s now the new Islamic “caliphate” has taken to undertaking the same sort of vandalism in Iraq and Syria in areas that have fallen under their control. The latest example came in the Syrian city of Palmyra — a UNESCO World Heritage site that is thousands of years old where the Islamists have begun pounding precious artifacts to dust this past week only days after ancient tombs were similarly destroyed. So, as media watchdog Honest Reporting notes, it was not inappropriate for CNN to publish a list of “the world’s most endangered structures on the verge of extinction” on its website. But astonishingly, ancient Palmyra, which according to its own reporting is under direct threat at this moment, didn’t make the CNN list. Not surprising, though disappointing, is the fact that the first item on the list was “the Old City of Jerusalem,” whose preservation, it said, was being prevented by “political tension” that exists “between Israel and UNESCO. This is an outrageous libel against the state of Israel, backed up by not a shred of proof (either on the CNN or the UNESCO websites) and perpetuates the most vicious myths propagated by Palestinian groups intent on whipping up anti-Semitic sentiments among Muslims.

In terms of the omission of Palmyra from the list, it’s difficult to imagine the thought processes of those involved in creating this article. Though the piece is the work of CNN’s Style section rather than its main news division, surely even the people working there ought to be aware that sometimes the news must influence even travel features. Indeed, the hyped language of its opening would seem to betray the notion that those responsible actually watch the news:

Go see them now, before it’s too late: threatened by neglect, the elements, changing architectural trends or ruthless developers, these outstanding buildings are all fighting a hard battle for survival.

Many of the structures that are listed after the Old City are of historical significance, but some are of questionable importance. Two from Britain, the Preston Bus Station and the Robin Hood Gardens of East London, date only back to the last half century and are examples of “brutalism” and are rather ugly structures that were not designed by UNESCO as worth saving for good reasons. Most are also not endangered by architecture critics or have outlived their original purposes like those two structures but are simply falling down due to neglect.

Including Palmyra on such a list, indeed listing it at the very top, would have made the article both newsworthy as well as accurate. Palmyra is a unique ancient city filled with amazing artifacts that would be worth visiting if it were not located in a country that has gone from a brutal dictatorship to a strife-torn battleground much of which now is in the thrall of fanatical Islamists determined to destroy any vestige of history that predates the Muslim conquest.

Which leads us to the obvious question as to why Jerusalem’s Old City should be included on a list of places that are about to disappear. The Old City is in the middle of an ongoing dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. However, it is not about to collapse. Even more important, to say that its preservation is being prevented by Israel is a flat out lie.

(+Video) Why is the Media Ignoring Egypt Hate Speech?

LOTL..
13 January '13..






This from CAMERA:

Investigative journalist Richard Behar was struck when he saw footage, from 2010 but recently publicized by MEMRI, of Muhammed Morsi calling his Jewish neighbors "descendents of apes and pigs," an anti-Jewish slur heard in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Writing in Forbes, Behar states:

Needless to say, this was HUGE NEWS for American mainstream media! Only it wasn’t. (Knock, knock, New York Times? Anybody home?) In fact, to be fair to the paper of record, not a single major outlet has covered it. Not AP or Reuters. Not CBS News or CNN. Not Time magazine or U.S. News & World Report. Not the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. Etcetera. And therein lies a story – a big story that this column can only begin to skin open here.

Behar argued that major-media reporters "need to hold Morsi’s feet to the fire over such comments – if not by asking him directly about them, then at least by reporting that he uttered them" But, citing CAMERA, he noted that

The New York Times rarely touches this stuff. In fact, a harshly critical mega-report about the newspaper’s Middle East coverage was recently released by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). The Times can’t be too happy about it. “The failure of the New York Times to cover the hate indoctrination leads the pack, in a way,” CAMERA’s head Andrea Levin told me yesterday. “The fact that they deem it to be so unimportant helps to lay down that news decision for others as well. And, to us, it’s one of the greatest derelictions in current news coverage of the conflict.”

The story also quotes a respected former news editor, an Israeli ambassador, and MEMRI staff and board members. Read it all here.

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.

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The Hamas rockets fell short as well as the ethics of the journalists covering them

Israelis take cover in a pipe used as
a bomb shelter, after a rocket was
launched from the Gaza Strip on
Thursday, November 15 in Kiryat Malachi,
Israel [Image Source: CNN]

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
18 November '12..

Wars are complicated and messy. So, sometimes, we form our views about them, and about the parties fighting them, from simpler things. Things like photographs.

On Friday, the Egyptian prime minister came visiting Gaza. He was not there long - an hour or two. Long enough for the insiders of the Hamas regime to arrange (engineer?) some photo opportunities, one of which ignited a firestorm of sympathy, attention and invective against the Israeli actions in this war, and literally, physically brought the Moslem Brotherhood politician to tears [see "Stop the carnage: Egypt PM weeps for Palestinian boy killed in airstrike and calls for truce"]. You can see the photo of the dead child in many places on the web. It's a tragic image, and one we prefer not to place on this page because it's a child there that is dead, and there ought to be a limit to how much an image like that gets exploited. But we're getting ahead of ourselves/

CNN published a video clip yesterday (Saturday) featuring the child and the tragic back-story. It's here.

Small boy caught in Mideast crossfire
CNN|Added on November 16, 2012
CNN's Sara Sidner reports from Gaza on how a small child became a symbol of civilian casualties.

The experts at CNN have it right; the child's death is a symbol, but of something else: the malevolence of the terrorists who routinely use deaths on their own side to advance their political and theological campaign. Watch the video and see the articles that envelope the photo that has been published in dozens of places. You are left in no doubt that this horrible thing (it certainly is horrible) was Israel's doing, and that Israel seeks the deaths of Gazan children.

But is it?

(Continue reading)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.
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When Everything's Been Said About Iran - "Italian Food"

Shoshana Bryen..
American Thinker..
03 July '12..

It was at dinner in the garden of a well-known analyst of Iran. He'd spent years writing prolifically and astutely about the regime, its progress on nuclear technology, dissidents, U.S. policy, Israeli policy, and the machinations of the P5+1. "What's the latest on your blog?" we asked.

"Italian food," he replied. "There's nothing left to say about Iran."

That doesn't mean nothing is happening -- only that, like in Bill Murray's Groundhog Day, the things that are happening are largely repeat events, and what there is to say about them has largely been said (1). Or perhaps it is recognition that writers and analysts, no matter how correct they are, do not have influence in the right quarters right now.

How many times over how many years have we heard that the unraveling of dictatorial regimes in the Middle East a) favor well-organized movements which are mainly Islamist, b) are not good for the United States, and c) are not good for Israel? Which writer will write the piece that makes the Muslim Brotherhood say, "Oh, right! It's better to have a country in which women are equal, dissenting voices important, and Christians and Jews good citizens who make our national mosaic better"? Who will write the one that makes President Obama say, "I've been wrong about the Brotherhood -- their election is not about democracy, it is about power"? Or "What I remember about Islam from my childhood was a child's view; now I am a grown-up and need to readjust"?

Give that writer a prize.

Marquadt-Bigman - Prominent Iranian ‘anti-Zionist’ shows his true colors

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
30 June '12..

A few days ago, I quoted from a post by Walter Russell Mead on “Iran and the Bomb.” Mead is one of the very few influential political analysts who regularly highlights and comments on instances of antisemitism. In his recent post on Iran, he argued that the debate about the question whether Iran’s theocrats were rational actors who would be deterred from using nuclear arms by MAD, i.e. “Mutual Assured Destruction,” was pointless because “anti-Semitism is never a rational policy, yet it persists.”

Just a few days later, Iran’s Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi was kind enough to prove Professor Mead’s point by stunning delegates at a UN-sponsored conference on combating drug-trade with a speech that the New York Times (NYT) described as “baldly anti-Semitic.”

Rahimi declared that the “Zionists” control the illegal drug trade and announced: “The Islamic Republic of Iran will pay for anybody who can research and find one single Zionist who is an addict […] They do not exist. This is the proof of their involvement in drugs trade.”

Rahimi also used the opportunity to talk about “gynecologists killing black babies on the orders of the Zionists;” he noted that “the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was started by Jews”, adding that “mysteriously, no Jews died in that uprising;” and he also mentioned his view that “the Talmud teaches Jews to think that they are a superior race.”

Commenting on Rahimi’s speech, Israeli Iran expert Meir Javedanfar described it as an “unprecedented, public anti-Semitic tirade in front of local and international dignitaries.” In Javedanfar’s view, Rahimi was breaking with “the usual practice of the Islamic Republic — which demonizes Zionists while purporting to respect the Jewish religion.”

CAMERA - Where’s the Coverage? Palestinian Leaders Allegedly Pocket Hundreds of Millions in Aid Money

SC..
CAMERA/Snapshots..
05 June '12..





A month ago, on May 8, 2012, Reuters published an interview with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad:

Given the task of building institutions in readiness for statehood, Fayyad said his job was being imperiled by a lack of resources, with Arab nations failing to hand over promised aid.

"There is an issue of survivability of the Palestinian Authority given the acute financial crisis we are going through," he said, adding his government needed a "few hundred million dollars" to keep afloat.

Despite the fact that their Arab brothers are withholding their share of aid money, the Palestinian Authority has received billions of dollars in aid from the United States and the European Union. So why is the PA on the verge of collapse? Where has that money gone? According to former PA official Mohammed Rashid, it has been embezzled by PA leaders with President Mahmoud Abbas worth an estimated $100 million.

Rubin - To Those Always Wrong About the Middle East and Who Never Lose A Gram of Arrogance or A Moment of Sleep Over the Tragedies They Create

Barry Rubin
Rubin Reports
25 September '11



http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/09/25/to-those-always-wrong-about-the-middle-east-and-who-never-lose-an-ounce-of-arrogance/

On the occasion of your supporting Palestinian unilateral independence despite the dangers this presents for Israel while simultaneously criticizing Israel for not giving massive concessions in exchange for nothing. On the occasion of the world groveling before Mahmoud Abbas, a ruler of a mere one million people who is in partnership with an explicity genocidal terrorist group, is dependent on Western hand-out, refuses to negotiate or compromise, and has cancelled elections at a time when democracy is supposedly the big thing in the Middle East.

On the occasion of your ignoring the fact that Turkey is ruled by an Islamist party engaged in massive repression and the transformation of the country into a dictatorship, holding that regime up as a model for other Muslim-majority states as it arrests dissidents on a massive scale and keeps them under lock and key while threatening war with Israel. The U.S. government chooses this regime as its co-director in the most important new international counter-terrorist initiative and as its manager of the political transition in Syria.

On the occasion of your whitewashing revolutionary Islamism andglorifying anti-Western forces that will yield a harvest of bloodshed and misery in future.

And most of all on the occasion of your ridiculing, censoring, or ignoring far more accurate assessments of the situation.

Here’s the record

1970s

You were wrong about Iran’s revolution.

You were wrong about Saddam not invading Iran.

Rubin - What Middle East Pundits Get Wrong

Barry Rubin
GLORIA Center
29 August '11

http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2011/08/what-middle-east-pundits-get-wrong/

A British writer named David Hearst has suggested in the Guardian that Israel will disappear because Arabs and Muslims continue to “resist” its existence. This is a fascinating example of the many things wrong with political analysis, media, intellectual debate, and the understanding of the Middle East today. Here’s a list:

1. The confusion between wishful thinking and analysis. Every day I am forced by reality to say things I don’t want to say. But people who no longer understand scholarly, scientific and intellectual values assume I only say it because of some political agenda. And that belief derives from the cynical, neo-Marxist, post-modernist concept that everyone merely represents a specific political interest. That concept kills democratic discussion.

An example: I would love Egypt to be a stable democratic state. That isn’t, however, what I see based on evidence. Yet if I say so, the response is likely to be insults or name calling. For instance, I only say it because Israel or America wants to discredit the Egyptian revolution. Yet understanding and policy can only be made on the basis of honest assessment. Otherwise, they will fail or make things worse.

Of course, the British writer is echoing what he hears in Arab discussions. They want Israel to collapse, hence they predict it. But basing their lives and policy, spending their blood and money, on this effort will lead Arabs to disaster – as it has already done for 60 years – and postpone progress for themselves.

2. The lack of real historical perspective. This article in question could have been written in 1948 or in any year since. If people continually predict something and it doesn’t happen, might that not indicate a need to change their view? Indeed, evidence shows that Israel has become more successful while Arab states – as recent months unfortunately prove – have become mired in internal conflict and retrograde Islamism.

3. One of many ironies about “multiculturalism” is its egocentrism. “Other” peoples are reduced to political symbols, something like an old Communist poster of heroic workers and equally heroic peasants.

Their views are only taken into account if they are led by the “proper” leaders. A Muslim leader who denounces the West and makes demands on it for accommodation is “legitimate,” but an immigrant who wants to integrate fully into Western civilization, or a leader who wishes to be an ally of the United States – they are sell-outs not worthy of respect. Moderate Muslims or democratic oppositions in Iran, Lebanon, and Turkey are put into that category. That’s why there are no campus or other demonstrations on their behalf.

In addition, true inquiry into other countries and groups is discouraged because it might lead to “unacceptable” conclusions. It’s amazing how little we know – especially from academic research or journalistic investigation –about Muslim communities in the West. There is hardly any real work on, say, Palestinian politics, political groups in Egypt, the Syrian opposition or the nature of Turkey’s ruling party.

HR Comment: Egypt Exposes Media Hypocrisy

Simon Plosker
Honest Reporting
07 February '11

The intense coverage of the uprising in Egypt – covered by nearly every journalist in the region – has revealed a significant double standard in the media’s coverage of Israel. The relative decline in coverage of Israel draws attention to the vastly disproprtionate amount of attention Israel receives in the world press, at the expense of coverage of other parts of the Middle East. As a result, relatively minor events in Israel are reported, discussed and analyzed well beyond their importance, while entire movements in places like Egypt are ignored entirely.

The question needs to be asked – is the mainstream media giving its readers the best coverage of the region?

(Read full "HR Comment: Egypt Exposes Media Hypocrisy")

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Media on the Middle East, January 27, 2011

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
28 January '11
Posted before Shabbat

http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/01/media-on-middle-east-january-27-2011.html

It seems to have become fashionable for some mainstream media outlets to become supporters of revolutionary Islamist movements recently. The Palestine papers case is an example but not the only one.

The pro-Hizballah Lebanon correspondent of the New York Times first told us that Hizballah wasn’t a threat to take over the government, then had to report on its taking over the government.

What’s his new line? That the new government is just fine. After all, he explains, the new prime minister wants to have good relations with the United States. Etc. No problem here. Just as there were no problems when Iran had an Islamist revolution, the Taliban took over Afghanistan, and Hamas seized the Gaza Strip.

I just love the headline: “Next Premier of Lebanon Tries to Set His Own Course.” So all those who believe the newspaper will not think that he’s just a puppet of Iran, Syria, and Hizballah. Unfortunately, he is.

Remember when we were told that sending a U.S. ambassador to Syria was not a reward but just a way to communicate better? Communicate what?

The new ambassador explains that this move is: “Proof that we are committed to try and solve the problems between our governments." In his talks with the Syrian president, they discussed, "Some areas in which we hope to identify mutual interests and ways of addressing them that serve the interests of both of our countries."

In other words, though he might well have been tougher in private (I doubt it but it is possible) the signal being sent is: Do whatever you want because we are continuing the soft line toward Syria.

The fact that this happened in the same week that Syria for all practical purposes took control of Lebanon is rather pointed, isn’t it?