The Morphing of Rudoren a la Birchall

Remember the social media scandals of now-departing New York Times' Israel bureau chief Jodi Rudoren at the start of her posting?

Well, I just discovered a previous such faux pas, in 1934, and also involving Jews and the social media of the day from this book, p. 54:

Another historical quirk.

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The Western Wall, the Kotel, Is ... Al-Buraq

Here:

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Jodi Ruderon Fits the News

A fair if brief wrap-up on the Temple Mount ends with this:

But in recent times, radical Right-wingers have refused to be satisfied with this [being allowed to visit the site under supervision but not permitted pray there] and have begun clamouring for prayer rights inside the compound itself. This has led to an increasing number of visits to the mount by Israeli activists, some of whom are said to have prayed surreptitiously, triggering clashes between Palestinians and the security forces.

This in turn has fuelled Palestinian accusations – refuted by Benjamin Netanyahu's government – that Israel is intent on overturning the status quo on the compound, which forbids Jewish prayer and cedes administrative control to Jordan. Yet the idea of Jewish prayer on the site is anathema even among many religious Jews. Many refuse to visit the site lest they enter an area where the Holy of Holies once stood, the most sacred part of the ancient temple and the place where the high priest – who entered only once a year on Yom Kippur (the Jewish day of atonement) – is said to have communicated directly with God.
According to tradition, ordinary Jews were forbidden to go to the Holy of Holies – whose precise location is unknown – because they were ritually impure.

Jews are at fault because we stand on our rights?

The New York Times published an analysis by Jodi Ruderon, Mistrust Threatens Delicate Balance at a Sacred Site in Jerusalem, which includes this relevant passage:

The real struggle over the site, however, is...between two peoples who seem unable to find a way to simply share. After triumphantly seizing the site during the 1967 war, Israel quickly turned back all but security matters to the Palestinian religious authorities, the Islamic Waqf. Now, as more and more Jews challenge Israel’s prohibition on their prayer in their religion’s most sacred space, many Palestinians fear that what they really want is to take over the entire compound and replace its Dome of the Rock with a third temple...“Enough is enough,” Rabbi Benny Lau, a renowned modern­Orthodox figure who had previously opposed Jewish visitation to the site, said recently. “It can’t be that Muslims stand on the Mount, pray as they wish under the Waqf rule, and the Israeli nation will be degraded to the depths.”

As for this bit in there - "The site has been a flash point since the advent of modern Zionism. More than 100 people on each side died in a week of rioting in 1929 over access to the Western Wall below" - see here. 

But, again, the onus is placed on the Jews.

Arab intransigence, unwillingness to compromise or agree to arrangements of coexistence, their fanaticism and violence are ignored, downplayed or excused.

She quotes Yitzhak Reiter who tells her

“The extreme factions within both the Israeli and Palestinian communities realized that holy place is a symbolic asset, so to speak, in consolidating support for their struggle.”

The Arab terrorists are only a faction or has the entire "struggle" of the Arabs-who-refer-to-themselves-as-'Palestinians' been mainly extreme throughout all levels of the population?

She quotes one Ali Qleibo, a cultural anthropologist, who also composes poems, who tells her:

“The Israelis try to force it — it’s not through negotiation, it’s not through discussion, it’s not through any rational means: They use the police, they come in a brutal manner to take over the place...It becomes political when other people try to take the symbol.” 

And here is another example of his thinking:

Until the early twenties, before the massive influx of European Jewish immigrants, both Christians and Jews were ethnic minorities. Whereas the Greek Orthodox Christian indigenous population maintained its own class structure and social position through the centuries, which was deferred to by the Muslims, the Jewish community, because of the transience of its members, was less rooted.

Transience?  Less-rooted?

She quotes another Muslim, Mustafa Abu Sway, dean of Islamic studies at Al Quds University and a member of the Waqf council, who continues the prevarications:

Islam does not prohibit outsiders from praying at Al Aqsa. The problem, he said, is that Parliament members have declared rebuilding the temple as their real goal.

No non-Muslim can pray there or read from the Bible.  That includes Christians.

And this is the posterior prayer position of Muslims there:

Their rears directed towards the sacred rock under the Dome since they turn towards Mecca.

All the news that fits the NYTimes' agenda.

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A NYT/Jodi Ruderon Equivalency

Another NYTimes (im)moral equivalency:

"More than 100 people on each side died in a week of rioting in 1929 over access to the Western Wall below."

"On each side died"?

In 1929, after an incident at the Western Wall during Yom Kippur of 1928, following almost a year of vicious Islamic propaganda, intentional violent attacks of Jewish worshippers, passing donkeys through the small courtyard after opening a doorway in an Arab house, playing clanging Dervish music and more, the Mufti Amin El-Husseini organized murderous riots throughout the country in mid-August 1929.

The number of Jews murdered were 135, some of the victims raped, dissected and otherwise put to a horrible death.  The riots lasted almost three weeks.  A few Arabs were killed, seemingly, in revenge attacks, but the vast majority of the 116 Arabs who "died" were killed in self-defense by Jews but actually mainly by British police and troops while trying to restore order and protect the Jews.

The blood dripping down the stairs

The Jews did not die.

They were murdered.

Slaughtered.

Hacked to death.(*)

Zvi Yosef Kizelstein, his daughter Chaya (18) and son Yeshayhu

Raped.

Babies crushed against doors, being swung by Arabs.

Limbs chopped off.

There is - and can not be - any moral equivalency in this matter.

(*)

In Jerusalem the Government published a refutation of the rumors that the dead Jews of Hebron had been tortured before they had their throats slit. This made me rush back to that city accompanied by two medical men, Dr. Dantziger and Dr. Ticho. I intended to gather up the severed sexual organs and the cut-off women's breasts we had seen lying scattered over the floor and in the beds. But when we came to Hebron a telephone call from Jerusalem had ordered our access barred to the Slonim house. A heavy guard had been placed before the door. Only then did I recall that I had inadvertently told a fellow newspaperman in Jerusalem about our gruesome discoveries.

________________-

from EOZ

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Devious New York Times' Reporting

The New York Times' Jodi Ruderon reports on the Temple Mount today after the UN's Ban Ki-Moon made a provocative statement.

Here it is:

"while rebuilding is important, we must tackle the root causes of instability," Ban said.  "We must give renewed attention to the West Bank.  "I once again strongly condemn the continued settlement activity by Israel," the UN chief said...'I am also deeply concerned by repeated provocations at the holy sites in Jerusalem. These only inflame tensions and must stop," Ban said.

That is provocative because the root causes existed before 1967 and before 1947 for that matter and they are not connected to "West Bank settlements" or "Israel's occupation".

But there is something good in those words in that they prove to PM Netanyahu that no matter how much he does not want to "initiate a religious war", it is with us and has been for decades.  Ignoring it won't make it go away.

Last February we read this

“The policy of the government of Israel has been and continues to be the maintenance of the status quo at the Temple Mount, including freedom of access for all faiths to the holy sites,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s spokesman, Mark Regev, told The Jerusalem Post. “The government has no intention of changing this policy.”

Two years ago in May, we read this, however:

 "I have doubts, to put it mildly, that if we deposit the Temple Mount with foreign forces, we will not [?] very quickly slip into a religious sectarian war," he said. "Only under Israeli sovereignty, the accessibility and freedom of worship for all religions is a certainty, and will remain a certainty. Only under Israel are peace and quiet maintained."

That claim is not at all a certainity.

More recently, Netanyahu added something and announced to the Hebrew press that he would definitely not change any status quo reality at the Temple Mount for fear of "igniting a religious war", unfortunately echoing the most extremists of Arabs, including Mahmoud Abbas and also what the Pope heard, as well as now, Ki-Moon.*

Be that as it may, what perturbed me about the NYTimes' story was this:

“Allowing extremist Israeli settlers to raid Al Aksa compound protected by the Israeli police is a further proof of the belligerent agenda of the extremist Israeli government,” the P.L.O. said in a statement, referring to Mr. Feiglin, who lives in a West Bank settlement. “Such actions are part of the Israeli goal to turn Jerusalem into an exclusive Jewish city.”

Writing this

  referring to Mr. Feiglin, who lives in a West Bank settlement. 

is being a bit devious for, as Ms. Ruderon knows, or should know, having done a previous story on the Temple Mount activism, at least half the Jewish visitors are not "settlers" and a significant element aren't even religious, like the students' group.

In other words, she is 'excusing' for that above PLO statement.  Instead, she could perhaps have noted that the renewed pro-Jewish rights advocacy is not solely a "settler" affair and that the PLO is seeking to disparage and slur the whole project by simplistically referring to all Jews involved as 'settlers". Or, perhaps, she could have informed her readers that since the PLO views any Israeli presence in Jerusalem across the former Green Line as one of "settlers", including the more than 200,000 Jews in the neighborhoods there, then by perforce Jews who enter the Temple Mount compound are to be defined as "settlers".

But, in leaving all that out, and her editors are also at fault, she is covering for the PLO and definitely not reporting in an objective comprehensive fashion and not presenting background or highlighting the violence initiated by Muslims.

That is being devious.


-_____________

*

From PM Netanyahu's Remarks at the Start of his Meeting today with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)

Prime Minister Netanyahu added regarding the violence on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem]:
"I’m committed, and Israel is committed, to maintaining the status quo exactly as it’s been for many decades.
What we’re seeing are Palestinian extremists who are instigating violence through incitement. The incitement is spread by false and baseless rumors that we are threatening the Muslim holy places.  Nothing could be further from the truth.
Israel scrupulously maintains the protection of the holy sites, the right of all religions to worship in their holy places, and will continue to do so, maintaining order, maintaining freedom of worship."

P.S.  Read Evelyn Gordon's oped.

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Jodi Ruderon is a Riot

Jodi Ruderon seems to be in dount, since she wrote this in today's NYTimes:

The authorities counted 42 “riots” — participants call them protests — on a single night in July. 

Now, to be fair, she at least should have encapsulated 'protests' also in quotes.


But, I wonder, what is her definition of riots that she would cast doubt on the police version?

In addition, this bit:

More than 300,000 of Jerusalem’s 830,000 residents are Palestinians. They are not citizens, but get social-welfare benefits from Israel and travel fairly freely. 

is misleading.

First, if they wanted to, they could, under certain conditions, become full citizens.  Their choice not to even apply. [that last section update thanks to SF]

Second, they are permanent residents of the state of Israel nad have the right to vote in municpal elections but not Knesset elections.  Not many do,

Third, what's behind points (1) and (2) are the fear, on the one hand of getting killed or injured or damaged from extremist elements among the Arabs and, on the other, their non-recogniton of Zionsim and Israel, two entities they despise.

Then she writes,

The Al Aqsa compound in the Old City has long been the site of sporadic clashes between Muslim and Jewish worshipers — and the troops that try to keep them apart.

Ms. Ruderon, it's the Temple Mount.  And if a "compound", then, at the least call it the Haram E-Sharif Compound.  Al Aqsa is one mosque therein.   And, as a friend mentioned to me, "I wonder if Rudoren can name even one instance in which Jewish worshipers attacked Muslims, or did anything to initiate 'clashes' with either Muslims or the police".  And they are not truly "troops" but policemen.  And "Jewish worshippers"?  Jews cannot worship there.  Why not point out that back-ver-backwards position of Israel's governments?

She's not a real journalist but she's a riot.


P.S.  She could have read now in Haaretz the truth:

Jerusalemis burningRioting and violence against Jews in Jerusalem is downplayed in the media and ignored by police.By Israel Harel   

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Something Amazing at the NYTimes

Three "Letters-to-the-Editor" --- and not one pro-Pal:

The Opinion Pages | LETTERS
Pain Behind the Release of Palestinian PrisonersMARCH 31, 2014

To the Editor:

Re “Remaking a Life, After Years in an Israeli Prison” (front page, March 30):
While I am in support of measures that both Israelis and Palestinians try to take to move peace talks forward, I was shocked to read about Muqdad Salah’s “struggle” to start his life anew after being released from an Israeli prison.

Considering his brutal killing of an elderly Holocaust survivor, I couldn’t help but cringe at Mr. Salah’s complaints. After what he did, it’s hard to sympathize with his boredom in not being able to leave his immediate area, all while the Palestinian Authority is paying him generously and helping him start a family with expensive in vitro fertilization treatments.

Serious peace is only possible with major sacrifices on both sides. Yet I yearn to understand how releasing and supporting convicted and confessed murderers lead to such a goal.

EMILY LOUBATON
Brooklyn, March 30, 2014

To the Editor:

The release of killers in the name of an elusive peace process is a triple insult: It negates the justice won for their victims, it reduces the lives lost to mere pawns on the Mideast chessboard, and it inflicts further pain on families already torn by terrorism. My nephew Koby Mandell, 13, was killed more than a decade ago, when he and a friend, Josef Ish-Ran, were stoned to death by murderous cowards in a cave in the West Bank.

My family is grateful that his murderers were never found. We know that if found and convicted, they would eventually be part of some prisoner release, a betrayal of the broken bodies of young boys. Every time there is a release of terrorists, we grieve for those families unlucky enough to see the killers of their loved ones cheered and celebrated.

NANCY M. LEDERMAN
New York, March 30, 2014

To the Editor:

You tread so carefully on the story of Muqdad Salah that you pass over the most important question of all: Why do Palestinians insist on treating Mr. Salah, who admitted to killing an elderly Holocaust survivor, apparently as he slept, as a national hero?

In what sense does the murder of an innocent civilian constitute a legitimate act of protest?

DANIEL REIFMAN
Yad Binyamin, Israel, March 30, 2014

I wonder, is Jodi Rudoren pleased with the responses or is she disappointed that her story, seeking to humanize the conflict ("humanize"?  the Arabs dehumanize the Jews), didn't elicit a thanks from some Pal. supporter?

P.S.  Read Tobin. (thanks JD)

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NYTimes Admits: Sara Netanyahu Respected

Respected as a child psychologist, that us:-

Corrections: October 23, 2013

FRONT PAGE

Because of an editing error, an article on Oct. 12 about the increasing isolation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, especially when it comes to his insistence that Iran completely halt its uranium enrichment program and that there be no halt to the economic sanctions against Iran, described incorrectly the criticisms that many Israelis have voiced about Mr. Netanyahu’s wife, Sara. While her purported temper has been widely faulted, her child-rearing methods have not. (Ms. Netanyahu is a respected child psychologist.)

Now, how isolated is Benjamin Netanyahu?

Well, Jodi Ruderon wrote:

when Mr. Netanyahu has recently tried to focus the world on the Iranian nuclear program, using ancient texts, Holocaust history and a 2011 book by Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, he has sometimes come off sounding shrill...the Israeli leader risks seeming frozen in the past amid a shifting geopolitical landscape... such isolation is hardly new to a man with few personal friends and little faith in allies, who shuns guests for Sabbath meals, who never misses a chance to declare Israel’s intention to defend itself, by itself.

But she admits:

The prime minister’s stance on Iran, his signature issue, though, is popular with the public. 

And someone I know, helps Ruderon:

Mitchell Barak, a Jerusalem political consultant who worked for him in the early 1990s and has watched him closely since. “The problem is now he’s lost momentum. His message is clear, his message is the same, the situation is the same, but everyone else’s perspective has changed. It’s like you’re the only one in a dark room with a flashlight.”

Mitch's last job was PR for the Foreign Media for Shimon Peres.

And Jodi's last word:
 

Critics and admirers alike say it is a Messianic crusade. Mr. Netanyahu is not religious, but he does see himself as a leader of destiny. 

“We’re here for a purpose — I’m here for a purpose,” he said Thursday night. “Which is to defend the future of the Jewish people, which means to defend the Jewish state. Defending it from a nuclear Iran.  “I’m not going to let that happen,” he added. “It’s not going to happen.”

_______________________

A friend noted:
 

In fact polls show significant Israeli support for Netanyahu. Mistakes will creep into stories when we report about what we wish were true instead of what really is true.

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NYTimes: Israel's Fault

Following the opening salvo yesterday, the New York Times continues to concoct the new conspiracy theory that Egypt's woes are all ... Israel's fault.

First, as Leo Rennert points out

...in pursuit of external meddlers aligned against Washington diplomacy, the Times prefers to build a case against Israel and AIPAC...There’s more here than a whiff of Jewish conspiracy theories that fueled medieval anti-Semitism..  Notice that AIPAC is tagged as an ”influential” pressure group presumably capable of swaying the U.S. Senate.  AIPAC cracks the whip, purportedly, and 83 senators jump to Israel’s tune...As for Israel’s  supposed role in taking sides against the Muslim Brotherhood, the authors of the article never bother to identify their sources.   Never mind that Israeli officials from Prime Minister Netanyahu on down are on record as having decided that Israel will avoid  involvement in Egypt’s conflict.   So why rely on dubious, unattributed sources like “the Israelis” and “Western diplomats ” and “the diplomats believed,” and General Sisi “appeared to be”  etc.?  Could it be  that on-the-record pronouncements would have spoiled the conspiratorial atmospherics favored by the Times’ reporters?

 

And not given the Times a pretext to build a breach between Israel and the United States?

Jodi Ruderon continues with reliance on an "official, speaking on the condition of anonymity" and publishes:

Israel Escalating Efforts to Shape Allies’ Strategy

and writes:

Israel plans this week to intensify its diplomatic campaign urging Europe and the United States to support the military-backed government in Egypt despite its deadly crackdown on Islamist protesters, according to a senior Israeli official involved in the effort...the message, in part, is that concerns about democracy and human rights should take a back seat to stability and security because of Egypt’s size and strategic importance.

While that is a line of argument and/or persuasion consider that since the MB's Morsi government has been in power, certain human rights and democratic values have been harmed.  That would include the Copt Christians and given the destablization in Sinai, the anti-Israel terror with attacks on Eilat, facilitaitng weapons smuggling, Beduins-turning-into-Al Qaeda, murdering Egyptian soldiers, etc., you'd think we all need to be anti-MB.


Anything real she can depend on?


Nope:

Israeli leaders have made no public statements and have refused interviews since Wednesday’s brutal clearing of two Muslim Brotherhood protest encampments...Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who convened an emergency meeting of his inner cabinet Friday regarding Egypt, has not spoken since the crackdown to President Obama...But Mr. Netanyahu has discussed the situation with Secretary of State John Kerry; Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was in Israel last week; and a visiting delegation of more than two dozen Republicans from Congress, led by the majority leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia.

And its always about the money:

While Israel is careful to argue that Egypt is critical to broad Western interests in the Middle East, its motivation is largely parochial: the American aid underpins the 34-year-old peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, so its withdrawal could lead to the unraveling of the agreement. More immediately, Israel is deeply worried that Egypt’s strife could create more openings for terrorist attacks on its territory from the Sinai Peninsula.

Ah, so regional instability is indeed a factor, one that affects not only Israel but Jordan and Saudi Arabia and are they not allies of the US and receive money too?


Interestingly, she does quote a firm right-winger academic:.

“This is a very big mistake to interfere in what happens in Egypt,” said Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and director of its new Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam...“Israel, by supporting explicitly the army, exposes itself to retaliation. Israel should have done things behind the scenes, under the surface, without being associated with any side of the Egyptian problem.”

And we have this rather contradictory point to the NYTimes' line:

...Yitzhak Levanon, Israel’s ambassador to Egypt until 2011, said the lobbying had not been aggressive.

“We are talking to a lot of friends,” said Mr. Levanon, who teaches a course on Egypt at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. “Pushing? I don’t think that this is the word. We are expressing what we believe is best for the region...We have to choose here not between the good guys and the bad guys — we don’t have good guys. It is a situation where you have to choose who is less harmful.”

So, no one quoted actually knows anything first hand but are punditing.



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Rudoren Goes Radical Sheikh

[this post is being updated at the end]

"In a West Bank Culture of Conflict, Boys Wield the Weapon at Hand" is Jodi Ruderon's seeming contribution to the start of a new intifada [for a previous NYT attempt to push for violence, see here] or rather to the on-going current "low-intensity conflict" (if you search that term at this blog, you should be able to find over 80 weekly to bi-weekly reports of many hundreds of incidents of stone-throwing, molotov/firebomb tossing as well as shootings and stabbings over the past year - 99% directed at civilians, not soldiers).  It's as if the NYT is preparing for the breakdown of the talks and what is expected, and indeed promised, to be the next stage: an outbreak of violence.


Of course, her piece could simply be following the B'tselem input she received and felt, stemming from her own personal and professional judgment, that a story on Arab youngsters who feel they must try to kill Jews is worthy of coverage.  After all, it's their "hobby":-

“Children have hobbies, and my hobby is throwing stones,” Muhammad [Abu Hashem, 17] explained weeks before his most recent arrest. “A day with a confrontation is better than a free day.”...Here in Beit Ommar...rock throwing is a rite of passage and an honored act of defiance. The futility of stones bouncing off armored vehicles matters little: confrontation is what counts.

"Futility"?

Yehudit Tayar's reports on behalf of Hatzalah of Judea and Samaria have counted 5,635 attacks in the first half of 2013 against Jewish inhabitants of Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, and the Greater Jerusalem regions alone, including 611 molotov cocktail attacks and 5,144 rock attacks. In addition, there were 8 shooting attacks and 3 stabbing attacks.  In total, the violence left 1 person dead and 171 injured, including a 3 year-old girl who was seriously injured.  The summary is here.  {That is a lot of pain, nerves frayed, insurance payments, having the Army patrol roads instead of borders, etc.}


Jodi could have come to me for assistance and suggestions as we have corresponded and I even managed to meet her face-to-face at the American Consulate in Jerusalem, albeit briefly.  


My neighbor's son, a 5-month old infant, could have been a Bar Mitzvah in a few months. Yehuda Shoham was killed [he didn't just die] by a rock that came through was thrown by Arabs through the windshield of his parents' car traveling home to Shiloh.

And did you know these children (17-year olds actually) play?

When they are not actually throwing stones, the children here play Arabs and Army, re-enacting the clashes and arrests. And when 17-year-old Bilal Ayad Awad was released in June after 16 months in prison, he was welcomed like a war hero with flags and fireworks, women in wedding finery lining the streets to cheer his motorcade.

Wow.  Jodi is getting a bit too joyful here, even if she is simply describing.  But she is not, heaven forbid, judgmental in her writing.  Recall: "settlements" are usually noted as "illegal" but is stone-throwing a crime?  In the United States it is as in other civilized places, including Israel, on both sides of the former armistice lines.

Jodi finally gets some stats in:

The Israeli Army commander in the area counts 5 to 15 stone-throwing incidents per week, and the July 8 arrest of Muhammad and his father, Ahmad, brought to 45 the number of Beit Ommar residents taken into custody since the beginning of 2013, 35 of them ages 13 to 19. A teacher at the local high school said 20 boys missed class while in prison last year. A few, including Muhammad, were out more than 60 days, forcing them to repeat a grade.

But, again, her emphasis is on attaching, constantly and consistently, sympathy and understanding to violence and evil.


And this description is downright ridiculously irrelevant:

Beit Ommar, a farm town with roots in the Roman era, 

Wikipedia even notes that

Beit Ummar is believed to be the site of Biblical village of Maarath [Joshua 15:59]

It's a place where they even fly the Nazi flag.



Jews eventually appear and do get a word in.

Menuha Shvat, who has lived in a settlement near here since 1984, long ago lost count of the stones that have hit her car’s reinforced windows. “It’s crazy: I’m going to get pizza, and I’m driving through a war zone,” said Ms. Shvat, who knew a man and his 1-year-old son who died {"killed", Jodi. "murdered".} when their car flipped in 2011 after being pelted with stones on Road 60. “It’s a game that can kill.”

It is no "game".

However, no specifics about the incident there and I'll quote a note I just received: "How sentimental - or acceptable in terms of journalistic integrity - is it that the Rudoren article describes the deaths of "a man and his 1-year-old son who died" (Asher Palmer and his son Yonatan) without saying the ring leader of the gang hurling the "stones" was convicted of murder? And others from the same gang are on trial on similar charges?"

And I am going to make an educated guess here that Jodi was fed a wrong chronology for this following incident:

It was the June funeral of a 2-year-old girl accidentally crushed by a relative’s bulldozer that led to his most recent arrest. “They were shooting gas, and I was with my mother in the car while the soldiers’ jeep was entering the town,” Muhammad admitted to a police officer after the arrest. “So I got out and threw stones at them.”

I think that stonethowing preceded the gas and our 'hero' Muhammed was simply continuing the "sport".

And here is the problem - with no comment by Ruderon:

Musa Awad, a teacher at Beit Ommar’s high school,...like many here, views the stone throwers with a mixture of pride at confronting Israel and fear for their safety. “Nobody dares to criticize them and say, ‘Why are you doing this?”

The elders in authority forgive and even encourage this violent behavior.  And  here is more claptrap:

They throw because there is little else to do in Beit Ommar — no pool or cinema, no music lessons after school, no part-time jobs other than peddling produce along the road. They do it because their brothers and fathers did.

Jodi, they do it because their grandfathers and great-grandfathers did - because the hate Jews.

Jodi even went out on a field-trip observation it would seem for her research {unless she viewed a B'tselem video}:

One Friday in July, two soldiers stood sentry on a hilltop several hundred yards inside the village. Five border police officers were stationed under an olive tree near the wholesale fruit market. More soldiers were on nearby rooftops, army jeeps in the middle of a road.

Three young men with slingshots crouched between trees, sending a little brother out to scout. They whipped the woven-string contraptions over their shoulders one, two, three, four times, then the stones disappeared in the distance. Two stones, five, seven. The boy reported that soldiers were coming closer. The young men retreated to a lower ridge.

Two soldiers with riot helmets and rifles appeared on a rock wall a few feet from where the stone throwers had been. Too late.

I'd love to ask Jodi if that was, well, exciting.  Really exciting, although not necessarily arousing.

And there's the "play" element:-

Muhammad Abu Hashem participates in a role-playing game constructed around being arrested for throwing stones.  Boys wearing fatigues and toting toy guns kicked on the front door and Mr. Abu Hashem opened it, smiling. While one of the “soldiers” checked his green ID card, another imitated a defensive military maneuver to secure the house. “It is a wrong ID,” a boy said in a mixture of Arabic and Hebrew. “Where is Muhammad Abu Hashem?”

Muhammad appeared at the doorway, and was blindfolded with a black sweatshirt. “Come with us,” the soldier-boy ordered. “You are under arrest.” Girls’ screams of mock horror were punctuated with giggles as Muhammad vanished into the midnight darkness.

“You are lucky if you meet Muhammad here next week,” his father said. “He can be arrested for real any moment.”

Muhammad is also practicing, perhaps, to escalate from stone to knives, like the Fogel Family incident:

He recently sneaked into a settlement before dawn to steal apricots he finds especially delicious because they grow on land he sees as stolen from his people. 

Although, again, Ruderon covers for him with a security blanket a la Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz:

One of his hobbies [is other is stone throwing, remember] is rescuing abandoned bird eggs and nurturing them in cages warmed by light bulbs until they hatch.  “When they fly,” he said, “it’s like a person in prison, and he will take his freedom.”

This is a rerun of the "radical chic" of the late 1960s, the new "radical sheikh".

This story is disappointing.

It is imbalanced.  It is inadequate.  It is swooning in its portrayal.  It avoids any humanity for the victims, the Jews.  It blames everyone but the "playful" Arabs.  Educators to not fulfill their roles and no comment is offered.  


_______________

P.S.

I received this:

Here is a report that contains a video with images of attempted murder in Beit Umar.

If I am not mistaken COGAT recently approved the construction of a by pass road in this area because of the stone throwing

___________________

UPDATE

Noam Sheizaf of +972, of the far-out Left, is really upset at Jodi.


Excerpts from his "'The New York Times' investigates a Palestinian hobby"

You thought Palestinians throw stones because of the occupation? Think again.  The New York Times published one of its most out-of-context items from the West Bank in recent years

 
...The head of the paper’s Jerusalem bureau, Jodi Rudoren...meets a local settler who explains how bad things have gotten...On Thursday, some settlers were forced to shoot the natives on this very same road. How unpleasant!
 
...[her] pseudo-anthropological investigation into the character and customs of the natives goes on with hardly any reference to the political realities...The word occupation doesn’t appear...nor does “resistance.” Apparently...occasionally being shot to death is a local Arab tradition, formed in the desert due to a shortage in swimming pools and piano lessons, and then passed on from father to son. The whole report actually reads like a letter from India or Africa by a 19th century British corespondent...how could such pieces be written by such smart people, again and again? I’d like to offer some of my own anthropological ideas.

The typical New York Times reporter is totally embedded in Israeli society...blind to the ongoing violence that Palestinians are subjected to...The heart of the Times‘ coverage – especially in the news pages – is done from an Israeli perspective, and even when the occupation is criticized, it is done by using the tone, language and arguments of the Israeli opposition. The Palestinians are kept as the object of the story – they are analyzed, their interests are explained by the author, and even when they are quoted, they are denied their own voice.

Oh, my.

____________________



CAMERA weighed in.

and also Honest Reporting, with a poster:

Jonathan Tobin at COMMENTARY.

and another.

Sharona Schwartz at The Blaze.


Adam Kredo at Washington Beacon. 

Lori Lowenthal Marcus at the Jewish Press.

 

 

Jerry Auerbach at Algemeiner.

 

__________________________

Israel Ambassador Oren weighs in:

“ ‘My Hobby Is Throwing Stones’ ” (front page, Aug. 5) describes a scene in which a Palestinian teenager “hurled a rock at a passing car with yellow Israeli plates.” The scene continues, “The settlers stopped their car, got out, and began shouting.” A chart shows the amount of time Palestinian stone-throwers have spent in jail.

While Palestinian protagonists are described in detail, their Israeli victims are largely dehumanized “settlers” — no name, age or gender. And for the record, all Israelis, irrespective of residence and ethnicity, Jews and Arabs, drive with yellow plates.

The article could have added another chart: the names of Israelis who have been killed or permanently maimed by rock throwers and the time they have spent hospitalized. One of the names would be Adele Biton, a 2-year-old seriously wounded by a stone in March.

The article notes that Palestinian youths attack Israelis “because their brothers and fathers did.” By breaking that pattern, Palestinian leaders can prepare their people for peace.

MICHAEL OREN
Ambassador of Israel
Washington, Aug. 6, 2013

Letters from the previous day.


And she been corrected:

The New York Times has issued a correction on an Aug. 4 article in which Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren falsely stated that the United States considers as "illegal" the West Bank settlements on land seized by Israel in the 1967 war.

In the second paragraph of the original story, Rudoren wrote, "The United States, along with most of the world, considers these settlements illegal," a claim that the conservative outlet Washington Free Beacon flagged as inaccurate on Wednesday.

The Times has since updated the online version of the article to read, "Most of the world considers these settlements illegal. ... The United States has not taken a position on the settlements’ legality for several decades, saying instead, according to the State Department, 'We do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity.'"

^

Jodi Ruderon and the "Palestinians"

When you are imprecise with your political terminology, the results can be catastrophic.

For example, here is a comment I left at the NYTimes' Jodi Ruderon's Facebook page where she wrote of "Palestinian citizens of Israel":

Let's zero in a bit on my words:

I am sure I commented on her use of the term a few weeks ago but here it is again:

what are "Palestinian citizens of Israel"? There is no "Palestine" to be a citizen of. Do you mean Arabs who are Israelis, in that they are citizens of Israel who assert themselves as Palestinians? Can Jews be Palestinians? Okay, they once were when there was a Mandate of Palestine but when Israel was established, no more of that. Can Jews be either citizens or even residents of a future "Palestine" or will that be a uni-ethnic state reserved for Arabs, as Palestinian Authority officials state?

Moreover, the term is intended to support the Arab campaign within Israel to achieve the status of an ethnic autonomy administration.

Ms. Ruderon 

should stop that usage as it is ideologically subjective and not reporting.

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Jodi Ruderon Defends Herself

Over at Politico's Dylan Byers:-

In an email to POLITICO, Rudoren said Abrams' accusations * about her worldview were unfounded, but said she "deeply regretted" using "imprecise language" and not studying the map carefully enough:

It's not correct that most of the people I associate with have a left wing perspective, or any particular perspective. In fact I have been widely praised for speaking to a broad variety of people for my stories.
The essence of what our E1 story said was correct: that building there is seen by Palestinians, peace advocates and diplomats worldwide as the death knell of the two state solution, because it prevents meaningful contiguity in the West Bank and easy access to the heart of East Jerusalem. (The Israelis also understand this; it's precisely why this area was chosen at this time.)
On deadline, late at night and at the end of a very long couple of weeks, I used imprecise language and, yes, did not study the map carefully enough. I deeply regret that, but it does not betray any agenda or anything about who I know or consult in my reporting. 

*  Those accusations?

...just about everyone she knows –all her friends– believe these things, indeed know that they are true. Settlements are bad, the right-wing Israeli government is bad, new construction makes peace impossible and cuts the West Bank in half and destroys contiguity and means a Palestinian state is impossible," he writes on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is a senior fellow. "They just know it, it’s obvious, so why would you have to refer to a map, or talk to people who would tell you it’s all wrong?"  "This was precisely what was feared when Ms. Rudoren was named the Times’s bureau chief: that she would move solely in a certain political and social milieu, the rough Israeli equivalent of the Upper West Side of Manhattan,"

^

NYT's Jodi Ruderon Walks on the Dark Side

The New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Jodi Ruderon, makes an observation:

During last month’s intense eight-day battle with Israel, the military wing of the Hamas government brutally and publicly put an end to Mr. Shalouf, 24, and six other suspected collaborators. The vigilante-style killings by masked gunmen — with one body dragged through a Gaza City neighborhood by motorcycle and another left for crowds to gawk over in a traffic circle — highlighted the pathetic plight of collaborators, pawns preyed on by both sides in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Let's repeat that:

 the pathetic plight of collaborators, pawns preyed on by both sides

I will not take the easy way out and term Ms. Ruderon's prose "pathetic", nor even her thinking as such.

But what can be said is that she is inserting her own subjective viewpoint into an analysis. She's opinionating, not reporting.

She could have written that these were Gazan peace activists or Arabs seeking reconciliation with Israel.  She could even have intimated that they were seeking to undermine a vicious obscurantist dictatorial regime.  Or seeking revenge for acts of cruelty done against their family members or such.

But she chose to go through a private prism of liberalism and worse, to adopt a narrative that any Arab seek to reach cooperation with Israel and assist in eliminating terror is somehow out of character or worse, doing something not natural.

Pathetic?  

No, Ms. Ruderon's worldview is wrong and her reporting is biased.

^