FP's Faux Pas on Boycotts, Israel, and 'Annexation' - by Sean Durns

Foreign Policy claims to “draw on the world’s leading journalists, thinkers, and professionals” in order to “analyze the most significant international trends and events of our times, without regard to ideology or political bias.” That, however, is up for debate.

Sean Durns..
CAMERA..
24 July '20..

Foreign Policy claims that its mission is “to explain how the world works.” But when it comes to Israel, the magazine frequently allows misleading commentary. Take, for example, several recent op-eds on “annexation.”

For several weeks it seemed that—in keeping with the parameters of a peace plan that Israelis accepted and Palestinians rejected—Israel would apply legal sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria, often referred to as the West Bank, and the Jordan Valley. Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that such a move would occur by July 1, 2020. It never did. But this hasn’t stopped numerous media outlets from inaccurately reporting on the possibility.

Indeed, publications like Foreign Policy have repeatedly referred to the application of sovereignty as “annexation.” But this is inaccurate.

As the international law scholar Eugene Kontorovich has noted: “Annexation in international law specifically means taking the territory of a foreign sovereign country.” And neither the Jordan Valley nor the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) belongs to a “foreign sovereign country.” Further, as Dore Gold, Israel’s former Ambassador to the U.N., has highlighted: one can’t “annex territory that has already been designated as yours.” The League of Nations Palestine Mandate, adopted later by the United Nations, calls for “close Jewish settlement on the land” west of the Jordan River in Article 6. The UN Charter, Chapter XII, Article 80, upholds the Mandate’s provisions. The 1920 San Remo Resolution and the 1924 Anglo-American Convention also enshrined Jewish territorial claims into international law.

Unsurprisingly, this historical and legal context has been omitted in numerous media reports, including those by Foreign Policy. Instead the magazine has run several op-eds that misinform as much as they omit.

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New York Review of Books Looks to 1947 Partition Plan to Determine Palestinian Territories - by Tamar Sternthal

According to the reckoning of the erudite New York Review of Books, the southern Israeli city of Beersheba is Palestinian territory. Displaying the same intellectual rigorousness, editors argue that an Israeli Education Ministry app reflects Israeli policy better than Israeli policy reflects Israeli policy.

Tamar Sternthal..
CAMERA..
22 June '20..

According to the profound reckoning of the erudite New York Review of Books, the southern Israeli city of Beersheba is Palestinian territory. By the editors’ logic, the same goes for the central Israeli cities of Ramle, Lod, Modiin (home of this Israeli researcher and over more than 90,000 other Israelis), as well as Ben-Gurion International Airport. The ruling by Review of Books editors from their lofty perch in Manhattan also places Nahariya, Acco, Nazareth in Palestinian territory.

The intellectual giants at the elite literary journal have made clear that, for them, it is the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan – categorically rejected by Palestinian Arabs and surrounding Arab states at the time – which is the basis for now determining what is Palestinian territory.

Thus, while The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Voice of America, Deutsche Presse-Agentur have all commendably corrected erroneous assertions that the disputed West Bank, and in particular areas in which Israeli settlements are located, are Palestinian territory, The Review of Book outliers have preferred to redraw the map entirely. When challenged about the designation of disputed West Bank land as “Palestinian,” NYRB editors cited the United Nations Partition Plan – a proposal roundly rejected by the Palestinian Arab leadership over seven decades ago – insisting that the West Bank is Palestinian territory. The natural conclusion about other areas also designated as part of the Arab state under the plan that the Arabs never accepted – Beersheba, Ramla, Lod, Modiin, Bet Shemesh, Acco, Nahariya, the airport, and more – is that they, too, are Palestinian territory. (On the other hand, under the 1947 Partition Plan, Palestinians have no right to Jerusalem, as it was intended to be an international corpus separatum, under United Nations administration.)

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‘Annexation’ and moral double standards at the Financial Times - by Adam Levick

...the editorial’s failure to hold Palestinians and their leaders responsible for behavior an decisions that are inimical to peace and co-existence, whilst focusing almost entirely on Israel, represents a pattern of bias and moral double standards that continues to compromise their coverage of the region.

Adam Levick..
CAMERA UK..
14 June '20..

An official Financial Times editorial (FT View: World should not be silent on Israeli annexation, June 11) begins thusly:

Nine years ago, Ehud Barak, then Israel’s defence minister, warned that the Jewish state faced a “diplomatic tsunami” if it did not come up with an initiative to move the Arab-Israeli peace process forward.

It’s telling that editors decided to start the peace clock nine years ago, in 2011, as it allowed them to omit Mahmoud Abbbas’s rejection three years earlier of Ehud Olmert’s peace offer – a plan which would have given them a state in nearly all the West Bank, all of Gaza and a capital in east Jerusalem.

Indeed, characteristically, in their 658 word editorial there were only eight words (part of a longer, unrelated sentence) critical of PA leaders, asserting vaguely that Palestinians are “poorly served by their leaders”.

The Financial Times editorial further argued that on “Benjamin Netanyahu’s 11-year watch”, he has “successfully buried mainstream Israeli debate about the concept of land for peace“, a grossly misleading – and confusing – claim. It’s confusing because it’s less than clear how, in their view, Israel’s prime minister “buried” debate about “land for peace”, a strategy, they argue, “that has all but destroyed Palestinian hopes of a two-state solution”.

But, even just taking the words at face value, editors clearly don’t understand Israeli society.

Though the importance of the two-states debate amongst most of Israelis has indeed ebbed significantly over the years, it has little to do with the government’s decisions – and in fact, the Israeli media remains as free and confrontational as ever.

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While Israel Boots Hebron Monitors, Media Boots Context - by Pesach Benson

...All these revelations about the Hebron monitors were reported in the Israeli media. The info was out there. But the wire services cited none of this.

Pesach Benson..
Honest Reporting..
30 January '19..

Israel announced that it will not renew the mandate for a group of international peace monitors stationed in Hebron.

The Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) has been stationed in Hebron for more than 20 years. Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy and Turkey have contributed civilians to act as monitors on the ground in Hebron since the organization’s establishment in established in 1994 following the Tomb of the Patriarchs massacre, during which Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Palestinians at the holy site. Because the Hebron monitors’ mission was originally meant to be “temporary,” its mandate had to be renewed twice a year by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The announcement to send the Hebron monitors packing was picked up the three main international wire services: Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse (AFP) — none of whom shed any light on the questions of why.

So why are the Hebron monitors no longer welcome? Why is this happening now?

Reuters and AFP cited vague Israeli accusations of TIPH bias but reported that the Prime Minister’s announcement didn’t offer any reason for the move. AP’s four-paragraph piece didn’t even say that.

You’d think the nasty Israelis booted out the observers for no good reason.

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Why Does Israeli PM Hopeful Benny Gantz Makes Himself a Stooge For Jew-Haters? - by Sheri Oz

I can only wish those campaigning for our votes were wise enough to realize that their campaign materials are not only seen by Israelis but by a world that judges us as harshly as it can.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
24 January '19..

Benny Gantz’s election campaign videos are being used by Electronic Intifada to tar and feather Israel. When this is your starting point:

. . . Gantz, like Netanyahu, is accurately reflecting the desires and fantasies of an Israeli public that views the willingness to shed the blood of defenseless Palestinians caged in ghettos after decades of expulsion and military occupation as the truest measure of leadership.

then there is not much they think Israel can do right other than vacate all the land like Hamas and the PLO would like to see happen. In fact, co-founder of Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah, has written a book proposing the one-state solution that solves the Israeli-“Palestinian” problem by ensuring that the Jews in Israel (and Christians and Baha’i) go down the same path as non-Muslims (or Muslims of the wrong kind) in the rest of the Arab world.

Therefore I can only imagine his glee when he set his eyes upon Gantz’s misguided campaign materials and the only positive thing I can say about the Electronic Intifada article is that they translated the videos accurately. First let us look at Abunimah’s justification for hating Israel, as stated in the quote above, and then I will talk about the videos Gantz put out.

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Any surprise that the Guardian downplays Iranian threat over Israeli airstrikes? - by Simon Plosker

...As far as The Guardian is concerned, Israel is the aggressor, carrying out airstrikes for the personal benefit of the prime minister — against Iranians who just happened to be in the neighborhood on unrelated business.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
22 January '19..

The Guardian‘s coverage of Israeli airstrikes against Iranian military targets in Syria includes some disturbing text:

Although the threat of direct confrontation between Israel and Iran has long simmered in Syria – where the Iranian military built a presence early in the civil war to help Bashar al-Assad – the most recent flare-up has come at a potentially dangerous moment.

On the Israeli side the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long directed bellicose rhetoric towards Iran, is facing the threat of indictment – perhaps as early as February – over corruption allegations, as well as elections in April.

Is correspondent Peter Beaumont suggesting that that Netanyahu deliberately contributed to this “potentially dangerous moment”? Is Beaumont implying that the prime minister orchestrated an escalation to divert attention from his legal woes?

That’s not journalism.

That’s a conspiracy theory.

Netanyahu’s ‘bellicose rhetoric’

For Beaumont, it is Netanyahu “who has long directed bellicose rhetoric towards Iran,” painting Israel as the aggressor. According to Beaumont, Iranian forces are in Syria simply “to help Bashar al-Assad.”

Only hours after the Israeli airstrikes, Iran’s air force chief Brig. Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh said:

We’re ready for the decisive war that will bring about Israel’s disappearance from the earth. Our young airmen are prepared for the day when Israel will be destroyed.

Could the threat be any clearer? Readers, however, only get to hear about this in the final paragraph of Beaumont’s report.

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‘The New York Times’ latest anti-Israel smear - by Tamar Sternthal

Thus, in one respect, Alexander is right. There has been a “Silence on Palestine.” But far from being silent on Israel’s bad behavior, real or imagined, the Times has obsessively focused on it. Michelle Alexander’s 2,000-word plus op-ed is a continuation of the paper’s compulsive placement of Israel under a microscope. Sullivan’s spot on advice is just as much, if not more, relevant today: It’s time to break the silence on Palestinian bad behavior.

Tamar Sternthal..
JNS.org..
22 January '19..

Reflecting a total lack of self-awareness, the trite headline to Michelle Alexander’s 2,281-word op-ed, online on Sunday and in print on Jan. 19, in The New York Times says it all: “Time to Break the Silence on Palestine.” The notion that the Palestinian issue is ignored, that a “silence” currently surrounds it or has surrounded it in years past, and that pro-Israel advocates muzzle opposing views is a common canard of anti-Israel activists.

For example, veteran Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, who regularly accuses Israel of war crimes and apartheid in the pages of his own newspaper and in international forums, recently charged that “it’s getting more and more difficult, more often than not, impossible” to publish articles critical of Israel in the mainstream press. But the facts say otherwise. At the Times, for instance, in the six months prior to Levy’s column, the paper published 10 opinion pieces showing explicit support of Israel in general or of a specific Israeli policy, presenting Israel in a positive light or defending it from criticism. In the same time period, the media outlet published 15 Times opinion pieces criticizing or condemning Israeli policies.

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More twisted facts versus Newsweek's claim to offer credible coverage of Israel or the Middle East - by Simon Plosker

...The Arab states that invaded the nascent Israeli state did not do so because they were “opposed to the displacement of Palestinians.” They did so because they were opposed to a Jewish state in any part of the Middle East. The displacement of Palestinians was a direct result of the war that the Arabs themselves launched and many of those Palestinians who left did so after encouragement from the Arab states to relocate while they drove the Jews into the sea. Once again Tom O’Connor demonstrates that he is not fit to write for Newsweek or any other publication claiming to offer credible coverage of Israel or the Middle East.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
16 January '19..

In July 2017, HonestReporting forced Newsweek to apologize for and retract two abysmal articles by Tom O’Connor. This represented a serious blow to his credibility and we asked whether he would be trusted in future to report on Israeli stories.

Sadly the answer is yes.

O’Connor’s latest piece demonstrates yet again why he has very little credibility.

Israel and Iran: A false and immoral equivalence

In a story focused on Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings that Israel is prepared to confront hostile forces, O’Connor writes:

Israel and Iran have long swapped existential threats, with the latter claiming influential allies such as the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement active in both its native Lebanon as well as Syria, two countries bordering Israel. Just days after his own outgoing top military commander admitted Israel’s role in backing an insurgency in Syria, Netanyahu dismissed Iranian claims that Tehran only played an advisory role in Syria’s civil war.

To back up the assertion that “Israel and Iran have long swapped existential threats,” the article links back to a previous piece written by O’Connor that HonestReporting critiqued in December 2108. We took apart this claim, showing how only one side had made existential threats against the other i.e. Iran against Israel.

We stated that unlike the Iranian regime, Israel has no desire to destroy an entire country and its people and O’Connor’s claim draws a false and immoral equivalence between the genocidal intentions of Iran and the comments made by Israel to deter Iranian aggression.

Yet, O’Connor has repeated the very same falsehood.

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Welcome to the Israeli ‘apartheid’ wall that isn’t - by Stephen M. Flatow

The fact that Israel spends millions of shekels building roads for Palestinian Arabs is a remarkable act of unreciprocated generosity. The international community should be heaping praise on the Israelis for kindness, not harassing the Jewish state with lies about “apartheid.” But I guess we’ve all gotten used to that kind of treatment by now.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
14 January '19..

“Segregated Highway Opens in West Bank,” The Washington Post headline blared this week. “Israel Opens ‘Apartheid Road’ in Occupied West Bank,” announced Al Jazeera.

Apartheid? Segregation? Not even close. Like so much of what pretends to be news reporting about Israel these days, this latest “Israeli racism” allegation is just another cheap attempt to smear the Jewish state.

This newest prop in the Palestinian Arab propaganda war against Israel is a highway called Route 4370, northeast of Jerusalem. There is a physical barrier down the middle of the highway. Israeli traffic goes on one side, Palestinian Arab traffic on the other.

Is that apartheid? Of course not. Apartheid means separating people on the basis of their race. Jews, of course, are not a race; and neither are Arabs. On both sides of the divider, there will be drivers of various hues. Dark-skinned Ethiopian Jews alongside light-skinned Russian Jews. Dark-skinned Arabs alongside light-skinned Arabs.

How about religion? Is the traffic divided according to religion? Not at all. On the Israeli side, Israeli Jews, Muslims and Christians are all permitted to drive. On the Arab side, Palestinian Muslims and Palestinian Christians drive.

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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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Ultimate Israel News Coverage Fails of 2018 - by Tamar Sternthal

Journalists who fail to uphold their professional standards of practice were a fixture polluting our media landscape, skewing even the year-end record meant to capture 2018

Tamar Sternthal..
Algemeiner..
30 December '18..

The end of the year is a natural time to look back on 2018’s most defining moments, the highs and the lows, the pictures and the stories which best capture the significant developments, movements, or trends. Reuters’ “Pictures of the Year 2018” feature, released last month, is a case in point. With 100 images capturing poignant highlights including natural and environmental disasters, diplomatic breakthroughs, the tribulations of migrants and refugees, international conflicts, cultural and athletic feats, and political turning points, along with scenes of incredible beauty and untold suffering, the news agency aims to convey the human experience of 2018.

And, among these scenes of triumphs and failures, epic and mundane, Reuters unintentionally included one more: the pervasive anti-Israel media bias which plagues much of the news coverage of Israel and its relations with its neighbors.

Thus, one of the selected Reuters images was apparently intended to convey the Israeli-Palestinian clashes at the Gaza border since Hamas began the violent “March of Return” events in late March. In reality, it exemplified the flawed, caustic media coverage skewed against Israel.

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

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The New York Times’ New Favorite Israel Talking Point - by Ira Stoll

...That’s not to say there’s no part of eastern Jerusalem that might eventually serve as some sort of Palestinian Arab capital. But the idea that that’s all the Palestinians have been waiting for, and that it’s Trump and Netanyahu who suddenly and recently made it impossible, is just not supported by the facts. The Times can repeat this claim as often as it wants to, but that doesn’t make it true.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
11 December '18..

The New York Times has a new favorite talking point about Israel.

The talking point has cropped up recently in almost identical terms in two places.

A December 7 opinion piece by Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, headlined “Anti-Zionism Isn’t the Same as Anti-Semitism; American Jews have nothing to fear from the new congressional critics of Israel,” includes the claim that “Now, however, Israel has foreclosed the possibility of two states, relentlessly expanding into the West Bank and signaling to the world that the Palestinians will never have a capital in East Jerusalem.”

A news article in New York Times print editions of December 7 includes the same claim, contending, “Palestinian officials were incensed by Mr. Trump’s decision last year to move the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move they feared could undermine their efforts to establish East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.”

The Goldberg piece is problematic for reasons I hope to get into some other time, but, for now, let’s stick with the nonsense about how turning “East Jerusalem” into “the capital of a future Palestinian state” was totally plausible until either Prime Minister Netanyahu or President Trump or the combination thereof supposedly scuttled the idea.

This is nonsense for at least four reasons.

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Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's Israel: A World of Hyperbole, Lies and Half-Truths - by Simon Plosker

...Alibhai-Brown concludes by calling on UK parliamentarians to “support peaceful Palestinian man, women and children who have so long been denied rights, livelihoods and dignity. Sometimes goodwill is the best present.” Goodwill is certainly the last thing that Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is capable of when it comes to Israel.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
28 November '18..

British commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has a reputation for publishing anti-Israel screeds dating back over many years. So it isn’t unexpected to find the usual litany of lies, half-truths and hatred in her latest piece that appears in i News.

The Holy Land belongs to all three faiths – we cannot simply colonise it with one, @y_alibhai
writes https://t.co/lbWT5TMnN8

— i newspaper (@theipaper) November 27, 2018

According to Alibhai-Brown:

Over the centuries, various holy land sites have been sacred to all three Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Jewish believers believe these were promised to them by Abraham, and for Muslims, Jerusalem is where Prophet Mohammed was sent glorious dreams and despatches from Allah. For centuries the three faiths were able to coexist in peace. Not any longer.

Why is the Jewish claim to the land a religious ‘belief’ while Islamic links to the holy land are referred to as factual?

In any case, Jewish links to the region in a purely religious context ignores (most likely deliberately) 3,500 years of Jewish nationhood that goes far beyond Judaism as just a religion.

And what history books has Alibhai-Brown been reading? Apparently none if she believes that “the three faiths were able to coexist in peace” for centuries, ignoring the fact that she is talking about one of the most fought-over pieces of real estate in the world.

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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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They’re quite willing to exploit the death of the heroic Officer “M,” who gave his life for the State of Israel - by Varda Meyers Epstein

...So you have to look to see if they are quoting an actual, credible Israeli official saying that it was botched. None of the outlets have that. The evidence just isn’t there. So clearly, they just want to smear Israel. And they’re quite willing to exploit the death of the heroic Officer “M,” who gave his life for the State of Israel, to do so. They simply have no shame.

Varda Meyers Epstein..
Judean Rose/Elderof Ziyon..
15 November '18..

Officer “M” was killed in an operation so secret, we’re not allowed to know his name. By all accounts, the operation was important and Officer “M” was a hero. Why then, is the media rushing to call the operation “botched?”
Reuters:

It's like a contagious disease, this word "botched." Yet there is no proof that the operation was not a success.

None of these articles carry quotes from Israeli officials to the effect that the operation was “botched." Probably because it wasn't. Brigadier General Ronen Manelis, the IDF spokesperson, to the contrary said, "We are talking about an operation that was well-planned right down to the smallest of details. It is the sort of thing that takes place every night, and in most instances remains under the media's radar.”

This time, added Manelis, the soldiers had found themselves in a "very complicated situation.”

In no way does anything Manelis said suggest the operation was “botched.” Something happened. That doesn’t mean the operation didn’t achieve its goal. That someone died does not mean the operation didn’t achieve its goal. There is just not enough information out there for us to come to that conclusion or to any conclusion at all.

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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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Newsweek’s Fact-Checking Lynk Fail of a Rabid Anti-Israel Activist - by Daniel Pomerantz

...Time and again, Lynk remains dedicated to his primary agenda: not to help Palestinians, but merely to demonize Israel at all costs, even if it means writing objectively untrue “facts.” All of which begs a critical question: why does Newsweek publish what is essentially a work of fiction, without even the most basic fact checking?

Daniel Pomerantz..
Honest Reporting..
04 November '18..

Newsweek has an unfortunate habit of publishing opinion pieces without even the most basic fact checking. A recent editorial by Michael Lynk, a UN Special Rapporteur, professor and rabid anti-Israel activist, is no exception.

Entitled, “Khan Al-Ahmar and Israel’s Creeping Annexation of the West Bank,” this article is so stuffed with untrue statements that it is closer to a work of fiction than a legitimate opinion-editorial.

The author

NGO Monitor and UNWatch have thoroughly documented Lynk’s support for at least one notorious antisemite, unabashed anti-Israel bias, and a laundry list of other ethical violations.

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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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Surprise! NY Times Doubles Up on Flawed Coverage of US Aid To Palestinians - by Ira Stoll

...I understand that news organizations often publish a first news story and a second follow-up story with reaction to the news. In this case, though, both Times articles included the news and reaction to it. I also understand that sometimes the content of news articles is driven by logistics of time zones or local holidays as much as by any editorial agenda. Even stipulating those points, however, this Times one-two punch seemed as if it could have used some better editing.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
28 August '18..

The New York Times is so worked up about what it describes as the Trump administration’s reduction in aid to the Palestinian Arabs that it covered the news not once, but twice.

The first article was in Saturday’s Times, under the print headline, “$200 Million in U.S. Aid To Palestinians Is Redirected.” It began, “The Trump administration announced on Friday that it would not spend more than $200 million set aside for Palestinian aid in the West Bank and Gaza, the latest in a series of measures that have infuriated the Palestinians.”

This first article was odd for several reasons. Despite the first sentence about having “infuriated the Palestinians,” not a single Palestinian is quoted in the Times article. Instead, for reaction, the Times finds “J Street, a liberal Jewish organization that advocates better relations between Israel and the Palestinians,” as well as “Josh Block of the Israel Project, a right-leaning advocacy group.” And “a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington.”

Then the article contradicts itself. “Mr. Trump has largely abandoned the role American presidents have for decades sought to play as a broker between Israel and the Palestinians,” the Times reports. Then it refers to “efforts by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, to forge a wide-ranging Middle East peace deal.”

Also odd is the Times claim that in recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, President Trump was “reversing decades of American foreign policy.” In fact a US law, the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, states as “the policy of the United States” that “Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the state of Israel.” That law also includes as a congressional “finding,” “Since 1950, the city of Jerusalem has been the capital of the State of Israel.”

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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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Israel and Good Journalism Drown in Roll Call's Shallow Waters - by Sean Durns

Roll Call’s July 27th report is notable not only for its length, but for its shallowness and omissions. It was long on superficiality and short on truth. Perhaps Roll Call is taking too literally the advice of another close observer of American politics, the American humorist and writer Mark Twain, who allegedly jested that “truth is the most valuable thing that we have, let us economize it.”

Sean Durns..
CAMERA..
24 August '18..

A 2,907-word article by Roll Call, the Washington D.C.-based newspaper that covers political and legislative news on Capitol Hill, was littered with omissions that distort the nature of U.S.-Israel relations (“Divide Over Israel Widens in Democratic Party,” July 27, 2018). The report, ostensibly about changing attitudes towards Israel on the American left, relied exclusively on questionable sources and heralded legislation and a movement that both have links to U.S.-designated terrorist groups.

Roll Call’s dispatch argued that the Democratic Party is increasingly disenchanted with Israel—and implied that the Jewish state itself is to blame for this shift. Given Roll Call correspondent Rachel Oswald’s complete reliance on sources that are at best, hypercritical of Israel, and at worst, antisemitic, the paper’s conclusion is as unsurprising as it is wrong and superficial.

(Continue to Full Article)

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

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The most important story in the world, at least according to the NY Times - by Stephen M. Flatow

Was it Turkish-American relations, mass murder of Nigerians, the car ramming in London? Guess again.

Stephen M. Flatow..
Israel National News..
16 August '18..
Link: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22631

Which is more important—21,000 people being exiled from their homes, or one critic of Israel being asked a few questions at the airport?

Which news deserves more attention—children drowning in “pit toilets” in South Africa, or one American Jewish pundit being slightly inconvenienced?

Which should we pay more attention to—a terrorist attack in the heart of London, or a promoter of boycotts against Israelis being delayed in his travels for 20 minutes?

According to any reasonable person, the answer, of course, is that the deaths of innocent people around the world are much more important. But not according to the editors of the New York Times.

The apparently earth-shaking news that Israel critic Peter Beinart was briefly questioned at an Israeli airport because of his pro-Palestinian activities (which include promoting the boycott of Jews who live beyond the 1948 armistice line) was, incredibly, given nearly half a page in the New York Times on Wednesday.

Let’s compare the 29 paragraphs—plus a large photo—that were allotted to Beinart to the amount of space allotted to some of the other news reported in the same day’s edition of the Times.

Israel and VOX: Explaining the News, Improvising on the Facts - by Gilead Ini

Vox journalists see themselves as shepherds. We’re left to wonder, by extension, how they view their readers.

Gilead Ini..
CAMERA..
13 August '18..

Vox just makes things up.

It might not be on purpose. The website’s young journalists might truly believe what they’re telling us. But what they’re telling us is too often egregiously false. At times the errors are so careless that it seems Vox reporters are improvising their way through a story, so convinced of their qualification to “candidly shepherd audiences” to insight, as Vox’s “About Us” page puts it, that they don’t bother looking where they’re leading us.

It’s fearless reporting, but not in a good way. Perhaps the most famous example of Vox boldly marching into error was its description of Israeli restrictions on free movement on a bridge connecting the Gaza Strip with the West Bank. These two Palestinian population centers, explained Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, are “connected only by a bridge that Israel limits traffic on.” As Vox later was forced to acknowledge, there is no such bridge. The author had misread something he saw online, he said.

Other absurdities followed.

(Continue to Full Article)

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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Keeping the Flag Flying in the Face of Hate - by Dexter Van Zile

...A few weeks ago, I got a call from a woman living in upstate New York who displayed an Israeli flag on her front porch on May 14 in celebration of the 70th anniversary of Israel’s founding. On May 17, the mailman brought a letter to her house and as soon as she saw it, she had a sense of foreboding. Whoever sent the letter was not her friend.

Dexter Van Zile..
Algemeiner.com..
31 July '18..

The process goes like clockwork. Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip attack Israel with rockets, kites, or huge crowds of people intent on crossing into Israel. The fact that these attacks are organized and led by Hamas — an organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction — is largely ignored or downplayed.

The outrage machine gets started when Israel fights back to protect the safety of its citizens and the integrity of its border with Gaza. When Palestinians who have put themselves in harm’s way get killed, many of the people in the media who had previously been quiet suddenly sit up and take notice to declare that Israel is using “disproportionate” force to defend itself against “unarmed civilians” or “peaceful protesters.” They also ignore the fact that Hamas has incited many of these “protesters” and many of the dead are known Hamas members.

After this all takes place, some people in the US — a minority to be sure — start viewing the Jews in their orbit with an evil eye, asking themselves, “What is it with them? How can they support a country that does such terrible things to those innocent and helpless Palestinians?”

When the biased articles and news segments come out, people start calling CAMERA’s office in Boston to tell us about it. Like any researcher at CAMERA, I get a fair number of these calls. Sometimes, they complain about a particularly dishonest segment on the BBC that was aired in the United States courtesy of National Public Radio, or about how a legacy network is using its jaundiced coverage of Israel as a selling point for its news shows. Sometimes, the callers describe the impact that this distorted media coverage has had on their lives.

(Continue to Full Column)

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

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Surprise! The New York Times Finds Another Way to Insult and Attack Israel - by Ira Stoll

As groundless as the Israel-apartheid connection is, it is nonetheless a recurring theme at The New York Times.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner .com..
27 July '18..

After two negative front-page articles about Israel’s new nation-state law, The New York Times is escalating its offensive by publishing an op-ed piece claiming that the Israeli parliament endorsed “apartheid methods” by approving the law.

The op-ed appears under the headline “Did Israel Just Stop Trying to Be a Democracy?” The usual rule is that when a headline is phrased as a question, the answer is “no,” but in this case the author seems to answer in the affirmative.

“The effort to guarantee equal rights for non-Jews has at times seemed like trying to square a circle. Last week, Israel gave up on even trying,” the Times op-ed says.

The article concludes, “Israel’s policy of promoting Jewish settlements has created de facto apartheid in the occupied territories of the West Bank. The nation-state law now formally endorses the use of similar apartheid methods within Israel’s recognized borders. What was long suspected has finally been made brutally clear: Israel cannot be both a Jewish state and a liberal democracy.”

The article is by Omri Boehm. The Times describes him as both “an Israeli philosopher” and “associate professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research.”

One interesting thing about Professor Boehm...

(Continue to Full Column)

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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