Kalman Liebskind on the Media

Excerpted in translation from Kalman Liebskind's column of September 6, 2024 entitled "Who Do You Hate More? Sinwar or Netanyhau?"

"Our mainstream press mentions the same Sanhedrin court. In almost every important issue on the agenda, there are no disputes, there are no arguments for and against. Everyone thinks the same. Everyone talks the same. And as a citizen - not as a journalist, just as a citizen - it's scary. Because in the weighty issues on our agenda, it cannot be that in every discussion between the right and the left and between the opposition and the coalition, one side is always right and one side is always wrong.

And in our case, it is impossible to take seriously a press that proceeds entirely from the premise that its side - the one that seeks to fully accept Hamas's demands - is the just one, the humane one, the one that cares for the abductees, and the other side - the one that demands to be insistent with Hamas and not yield - is made up of a collection of heartless people who are not interested in the fate of the abductees and all that matters to them in life is that Netanyahu remains in power.

This week, Shmuel Rosner and the Jewish People's Policy Institute published a survey conducted immediately after the announcement of the murder of the six abductees. Two positions were presented to the respondents regarding the abductees deal, and they were asked to answer which of them was closer to their own position. 49% of the Jews answered that "Israel must not relinquish control of the Philadelphi corridor, even if because of this there would be no kidnapping deal." 43% answered that "Israel should give up control of the Philadelphi corridor to allow a deal to release hostages." 

Leave the nuances for a moment. Leave aside the fact that Hamas did not respond positively to the deal in question. Let alone the fact that the terrorist organization is not satisfied with the Philadelphi corridor but wants many other important things. Leave aside the fact that we have seen different and varied polls in their results, to a large extent depending on the poll taker and the wording of the questions. Also leave aside the question of what you would answer if you yourselves were asked.

The results of all the surveys, and as mentioned, regardless of their exact bottom line, show that there is a serious disagreement in Israeli society on the question of the right price to pay in the deal. And the fact that the media, which are supposed to reflect this controversy, make sure not to do so, and conduct aggressive propaganda in favor of one position and the complete delegitimization of the other position - is nothing but a professional crime.

Because what is happening these days in the media is something that even I, whose opinion on the Israeli press I have been posting here for many years, have not seen for a very long time. Everything is allowed. Everything is normal. The red lines, if there were any, were completely erased. One by one, all the reporters, moderators, presenters and commentators stepped forward and explained, some with blunt words and some with even more blunt words, that the Israeli government was to blame. A brutal terrorist organization is massacring innocent Jews, and the Israeli press places all the blame on its own government. Hamas's job is to murder us, our own job is to submit to all of its demands, and if we don't do it, fully - it is quite clear that our hands are covered in blood. We have a government of traitors, we have a government of murderers, we have a government of the irresponsible, we have a government that Hamas was willing to do anything to free its abductees, but it stubbornly says no. I ask seriously: what is the difference between the position of the leader of Hamas, and the position voiced this week by our current affairs broadcasts?

And this is not new. Our press has failed miserably in its almost singular role in every contact we have had with the enemy in recent decades. In the Oslo agreement, in the withdrawal from Lebanon, in the Disengagement, in the Shalit deal. In all these events, which ended in rivers of Jewish blood, there was no press that asked questions, there was no press that demanded answers, there was no press that raised doubts, there was no press that criticized.

I know the constant responses that come whenever I make claims of this kind, responses that wonder "why do you deal with the press all the time?". The answer is simple. Because I believe in the role of journalism and its power to correct, check, investigate, monitor, and prevent disasters before they occur. And in all these respects, Israel has no press. There is a huge collection of people with political positions, legitimate positions, of course, who flock like a herd after every political step that fits their agenda without stopping for a moment and without doing their job.

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A Pro-Israel Question at a State Department Presser (UPDATED)

 A rarety.

A pro-Israel question at a State Department Presser:

QUESTION:  Okay.  In light – thanks, Matt.  In light of UNRWA donors’ – that’s a UN agency – recent meetings at the UN, will the U.S. ask the UN to inspect and disarm UNRWA refugee camps that have become well-equipped arsenals?  And I have a follow-up question. 

MR MILLER:  Do you mean – where particularly do you mean? 

QUESTION:  In the Middle East. 

MR MILLER:  In the Middle – yeah. 

QUESTION:  In the Middle East. 

QUESTION:  UN Relief and Works Agency.

QUESTION:  Okay, so regarding Israel — 

MR MILLER:  I was – I wanted to get a little more specific. 

QUESTION:  — and the Palestinian idea.  But the UNRWA issue, so — 

MR MILLER:  So I will say that, as we have said before, we have long recognized Israel’s right to defend itself and take actions to secure its territory. 

QUESTION:  Okay.  The follow-up to that is:  Will the U.S. challenge the official Palestinian school curriculum, which rejects the two-state solution by teaching the next generation to reject any recognition of Israel?  

MR MILLER:  So, I will say that we support the two-state solution.  You’ve seen me asked about that on a number of occasions.  That will continue to be our policy, and that will be our policy as it pertains to anyone on either side of this longstanding conflict who wants to take a different position. 

QUESTION:  What about those well-equipped arsenals and the concerns that Israel has that are happening – that are occurring in the UN agency UNRWA camps? 

MR MILLER:  Again, as I’ve said, we support Israel’s right to secure its nation.

Who was the journalist?*

*

The journalist is Dr. Anthony Harper of InterMountain Christian News

^

The Tool That Is Twitter

In my Media Comment columns at the Jerusalem Post, wrttten conjointly with Eli Pollak, we have highlighted an aspect of Twitter that we see as harmful to objective and fair journalism which is the way it leads journalists to become personal and then strident and nasty in their conversation which spills over back into their reporting.

In this June 8 NYTimes article, there is revealed another aspect, one in which the reporter feels obliged, because of the mass feedback that Twitter generates in an intoxicating fashion, to respond to what his/her audience wants to hear:

The central vein for reporters, producers, activists and a vast national audience was Twitter, which had already begun subtly shifting the power dynamic innews. It steered coverage. When John Eligon of The Times published a largely sympathetic profile of Mr. Brown that described him as “no angel,” it setoff outrage on Twitter as a symbol of a style of journalism that seemed too ready to explain away police violence. “They had a point” about the phrase, Mr. Eligon recalled last week. Twitter “did make it feel like you’re more accountable to a broader audience and a more diverse audience.”The platform also gave the younger reporters “freedom to establish their own stilts in ways we didn’t have without someone handing us the keys,” said Trymaine Lee, then 35 and reporting for MSNBC. “Before you’re at the whim of the newsroom,’’ said Mr. Lee. Buton Twitter, the young journalists received “positive reinforcement,they’re getting thousands and thousands of people saying, ‘Yes, we do like that.’”

To borrow radical progressive political terminology, this is media weaponizing in support not of social or economic or political change and improvement but in support of revolution while jettisoning any normative ethical professionalism.

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The Educating of the Press

According to what I read, two dozen anchors and executives from CBS, NBC, CNN, and ABC, including Lester Holt, Chuck Todd, Wolf Blitzer, Gayle King, David Muir, and Martha Raddatz and some others (NBC’s Deborah Turness, Lester Holt, ABC’s James Goldston, George Stephanopoulos, CBS’ Norah O’Donnell John Dickerson, Charlie Rose, Christopher Isham, Fox News’ Bill Shine, Jack Abernethy, Jay Wallace, Suzanne Scott, MSNBC’s Phil Griffin and CNN’s Jeff Zucker and Erin Burnett) were invited to a press briefing and with the President-elect were his top aides including Stephen Bannon, Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, and Kellyanne Conway (also spokesman Jason Miller, and Republican National Committee chief strategist and communications director Sean Spicer).

Trump blasted the media coverage.

The reactions?

One participant at the meeting said that Trump’s behavior was 

“totally inappropriate” and “fucking outrageous.” 

Another remarked 

“I have to tell you, I am emotionally fucking pissed,”

Another source I reviewed contained this 

“It was like a f–ing firing squad,”

and this

“Trump kept saying, ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong.’ He addressed everyone in the room calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was [a] network of liars,” the source said.

In a separate incident, an interview, I caught this exchange:

"I think we should all learn from the election that this doesn't fly with the voters," she [Kellyanne Conway] said, adding that CNN is "focusing on divisions" by calling out Trump's tweets.

"This network and other people will always be focused on divisions. How about accepting the election results,[CNN host] Chris [Cuomo], and letting him form a government?" Conway said. "He is a leader and takes the counsel of many people, and that's exactly what he's doing."

"And a leader should also have thick skin," Cuomo shot back.

My takeaways:

1. Media people use the "F" word a lot.

2. Media people do not seem to have thick skin themselves.

3. They probably still don't think they did too much wrong during the campaign.

4. This is going to be some ride. 

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Careful When a Journalist 'Explains' Something to You

Here's a description of the latest incident in which Binyamin Netanyahu is portrayed in a scandalous fashion, a descritpion which I think is fair :

On Saturday evening, Netanyahu gave interviews to Israeli television channels from New York....One of the issues raised during the interviews had to do with values. Netanyahu was asked if he regretted the phone call he had made to Charlie Azaria, the father of Sgt. Elor Azaria, who is on trial for manslaughter after being filmed shooting a seriously wounded Palestinian terrorist to death in Hebron. He replied that he had no regrets.
 Channel 2's Udi Segal asked him if he had telephoned parents of other soldiers who allegedly disobeyed the army's orders, and Netanyahu replied: "No, but I did call many parents who were in distress over the fact that their sons had been killed or had gone missing."

But then the writer, Nahum Barnea, "explains" the scandal:

The comparison between the parents of a soldier who is on trial for manslaughter and the parents of missing soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul is outrageous, not least because of the unbridgeable abyss between fighters who sacrificed their life for the state and a soldier accused of a serious crime. It is outrageous because of the abyss separating between the parents...And it's outrageous because it offers Israelis in general, and those who serve in the army in particular, a distorted value system which must not be accepted. Soldiers are not children. They are adults,

However, it is Barnea making a bad comparison.

Netanyahu was asked about making a phone call to relieve distress of a parent who is concerned his child, while in uniform, is perhaps not being treated fairly, in a lawful fashion or, because of the situation the parent finds himself in, physically. medically, economically or psychologically.

Let's not forget that in that phone call to the soldier on trial, the Prime Minister did not identify with the soldier's action but informed the father that he must trust the system.  

“I have full faith in the IDF and its chief of staff, and that I think you, too, should have faith in the commanders and examination, just as the people of Israel need to stay united around its army. We only have one army, with many more challenges ahead of us,” Netanyahu added. 

If anyone, it was the former Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon who injected a prejudicial tone into the public discourse, saying then

when someone has his hands up, or is already neutralized, that’s when you arrest,” he added. “Whoever supports these kinds of acts [the soldier’s] is damaging the values of the Israel Defense Forces.”

in what was a blatant attempt to subvert justice and interfere with the future trial and the then on-going investigation.

But the media went into a shark frenzy, Yedioth Ahronot plastered the above column on page 1 and Netanyahu had to clarify 

The Prime Minister’s Office issued a clarification on Sunday, in which Netanyahu stated, “I am sorry if my words were misunderstood.” He continued to say that “In no way did I compare the suffering of bereaved families—a suffering I am very familiar with—to that of other parents who are also suffering. There is no comparison and can be no comparison.”

Haaretz went further, of course:

Prime minister openly supports Elor Azaria and demonstrates empathy toward his family, even if it's seen as challenging the military justice system.

wrote Amos Harel and Gili Cohen.

Netanyahu, declares the first principle of Israel journalism, is guilty.

The second principle is he can never be correct.

And if he isn't guilty and is correct, then the third principle is that he must be doing it for an ulterior reason.

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Long Live the Free Press

The media engages in exposing facts.

Like politicians stealing taxpayers money.

Like financial tycoons exploiting friendships to get good deals.

Like employers harrassing their employees.

The media self-glorifies in exposure, revelations, leakings and full disclosure.

And the media lashes out at anyone who incringes on its rights of freedom of the press, freedom of expression, etc.

Right?

Er, well...

The BBC has said new rules to force it to reveal the pay of its on-air talent are “disappointing” and likely to cause a “massive headache” after the government confirmed that any employee earning more than £150,000 would be identified.
Culture secretary Karen Bradley said the new obligations to reveal details of stars’ pay would help make the BBC a more “transparent and open” organisation as she launched a draft charter which also confirmed changes to the BBC’s historic system of governance.  In response, Rona Fairhead, who is to stand down as chair of the BBC Trust, said the governing body was “disappointed” by the change in disclosure rules.

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Freedom House Is A House of Horrors

Did you know that Freedom House has downgraded Israel's media status?

And why?

Israel declined due to the growing impact of Yisrael [Israel, actually] Hayom, whose owner-subsidized business model endangered the stability of other media outlets, and the unchecked expansion of paid content—some of it government funded—whose nature was not clearly identified to the public. (p. 20)

That reads as if someone from Yedioth Ahronot, in the past a virtual monopoly on the media scene, had composed that.  Or someone from Haaretz.

Every newspaper is owned.  Haaretz has a foreign investor.  And all owners, at some point, subsidize their outlet.  Does that mean it, too, should under a certain impact?

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The Problem With the Media

I think I have found an excellent example of the problem with some media people.

Here is an extract from the script of the movie Showtime.

Rene Russo plays a television show host who wants to turn police work into a reality. She comes to her producer, Peter Jacobson, and throws the newspaper down before him to get him to see what she is talking about which is a policeman, Robert De Niro, who shot a video camera that was in his way:

Russo: I have the show to pull your network from the ratings toilet.

Jacobson: You can do public executions?

Russo: Meet Mitch Preston.

Jacobson: You know I don't read.

Russo: Look at the pictures.

He doesn't read?

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On the Media From Within the Media

From Yaron Dekel's op-ed, Globus, March 23:

...When I returned from the post of IBA Washington's envoy, somewhere in 2007, I came across a harsh media disease. Kadima was its name. Ehud Olmert was God, followed by Tzipi Livni who was the Holy Spirit. You could not say a bad word about them. Any criticism was considered treason of the herd, the profession and the tribe. Even when it was clear that Netanyahu had a stemming bloc after the 2009 elections, the media continued to put together another coalition headed by Livni.

During these recent elections, most of the media sinned against its role. Criticism of Netanyahu passed the line between legitimate and necessary criticism over to an aggressive and uninhibited campaign. Netanyahu, the prime minister, may not be perfect, and there are many reasons to criticise him, but the bon-ton would view him as a dark figure who will bring about the end of the state and the end of Zionism. The fact, for example, that the prime minister was cautious and hesitant not to rush on decisions on military operations, was absent from the discourse. The blackening was almost total, and any statement about this situation was met by the self-righteous response, "but Netanyahu has a newspaper". Well, and if it has? So, then, there's no obligation to ethics, to fair coverage?

Now is a good time for drawing a proper accounting and conclusions, of a professional and personal soul-searching in the media. Why did the media again assume for itself a conception? Again, we went blindly, as in a chimney, after opinion polls. And now, in the absence of proper care in substance, again they seized the headlines, and made political coverage of the story as of Sweepstakes: superficial, biased, and, as it turned out last Tuesday, detached from the field. The media lives in a bubble created by itself, being overwhelmed by the smells of its own perfumes and is not sensitive to any significant or deep currents in Israeli society.

The late Minister Uri Orbach was a ground-breaker of the entry of right-wingers in to the mainstream media...there are not enough successors to Orbach. Only a significant entry into the established mainstream media of journalists with skullcaps, residents from the periphery and those holding a right-wing line, will change the situation and free it from its 'within-a-bubble' reality.

In a country where 80% of media consumers believe in God, the media mediators must create an identification in their consumers with the media. Not for right-wingers, or those who wear crocheted kippot. On behalf of the media, its credibility and its importance in a democratic society. Without such a determined course, its status will continue to erode, unfortunately.

The author is head of Army Radio.

^

Instruments of Media Control

Read this carefully:

...QUESTION: Everybody knows the endgame, but I wonder now whether you can understand the fear of Israelis. Do you understand that many Israelis feel that no deal is better than a bad deal --

SECRETARY KERRY: I have no argument with anybody in Israel who wants to say to me, “No deal is better than a bad deal.” I say that too. No deal – and I’m not in the business of trying to put together a bad deal. So everything we’re doing is working very, very closely with both sides to meet the security needs and the long-term needs of both sides. One thing I know – gosh, I mean, I know it 100,000 percent – is that you can’t turn to the people of Israel with the prospect that what you’re offering is going to turn the West Bank into Gaza. You can’t do that. Of course I understand that. Israel’s security is ironclad as a priority in this issue, and I’ve said that since day one.

QUESTION: But the things that happened ever since, and I’m asking concretely about the collapse of the Oslo Accords, about the fiasco at Camp David, about the eruption of the second intifada, and I’m asking that because many Israelis feel that every time we gave up, we got a violent response.

That's from the February 11th TV interview with Ilana Dayan.

Follow Dror Eydar's lead --- he published this:

"Everybody knows the end game," Dayan said to Kerry. This is a typical left-wing statement that means: Everybody knows that in the end, Jerusalem will be divided and the Palestinians will receive all of Judea and Samaria (except for the settlement blocs), and so on.

Well, no, not everybody knows that. Many serious people think differently. So far, the solutions proposed by the left-wing camp have pushed us to the edge of the abyss. Like the rest of her fellow journalists, Dayan resists being described as belonging to any "political camp." After all, she is from the U.N. and has no political agenda that receives prominence on her program. But that is the root of the lie that has been stuffed down the Israeli public's throat -- supposedly, there is a press that reports the news and is objective and free of political ambitions, and there is a press that is right-wing. That is not true at all.

Context and framing are the weapons, okay, instruments, of media control.

^

A Media Comment from Alec Baldwin

Now I loathe and despise the media in a way I did not think possible. I used to engage with the media knowing that some of it would be adversarial, but now it’s superfluous at best and toxic at its worst. If MSNBC went off the air tomorrow, what difference would it make? If the Huffington Post went out of business tomorrow, what difference would it make? Arianna Huffington accomplished what she wanted to accomplish. She created this wonderful thing. And what have they done with that? They want clicks, I get it. They’ve gotta have clicks for their advertisers, so they’re going to need as much Kim Kardashian and wardrobe malfunctions as possible. The other day, they had a thing on the home page about pimples. Tripe. Liberal and conservative media are now precisely equivalent.

And

There was a time the entire world didn’t have a camera in their pocket—the first thing that cell phones did was to kill the autograph business. Nobody cares about your autograph. There are cameras everywhere, and there are media outlets for them to “file their story.” They take your picture in line for coffee. They’re trying to get a picture of your baby. Everyone’s got a camera. When they’re done, they tweet it. It’s … unnatural.

Source

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Where We Do Fail in Hasbara Public Diplomacy

My good friend Michael Freund at Pundicity deals with Hasbara (croos-posted at the Jerusalem Post), analyzes it well and makes a 'heretical' point:

...if the mainstream media is so profoundly against us, then why are we doing so well in the arena of American public opinion? If the image being conveyed of Israel is so consistently negative, then why do people there seem to like us so much?...the fact remains that we must be doing something right in how we explain ourselves if our public standing in America is so strong and resilient.
 

True.

However, the really injurious damage to Israel - its image, its standing, its security, its polices - that is done by the media is within that element of America's, as well as Europe's, population (and the problem in Spanish-speaking countries, whether Spain or South Anmerica is also bad) that more than any other are already in, or preparing to enter, the corridors of public service and the academic world, as well as to the media.

These are overwhelmingly liberal/progressive, still, and they refill the anti-Israel trenches.  They are not convinced by the turth for they have their personal, cultural and ideological issues with Israel, with Zionism and with Jews and Judaism.  They are naturally sympathetic to ther Arab/Islamic cause and, from my four-decades long experience, refuse to believe the truth, ignore the facts, extend no empathy to Israel and this group is not only strengthened but even emboldened by the media to rathc up the public diplomacy war against Israel.

And that is why any failings on our part is important to be corrected, sooner than later.

For the future.

^

How Do I ويسرائيل ميداد Look in Arabic?

In this item:

Photograph: Gideon Abenar


عارف ابو قويدر يحصد جائزة مراجعة الاعلام الاسرائيلي
موقع بانيت وصحيفة بانوراما

11/03/2013

في حفل كبير في بيت الاعلام (سكولوف) في مدينة تل ابيب، قامت - كما في كل عام - مؤسسة "حق الجمهور في المعرفة" منح جائزتها الاكاديمية لهذا العام 2013 ،

تصوير: جدعون ابينعر
لابن النقب عارف ابو قويدر كأفضل بحث اكاديمي والتي تدعى جائزة مراجعة الاعلام الاسرائيلي على اسم ابرموفيتش لعام 2013 .
تأتي هذه الجائزة المشرفة في اعقاب بحثه الذي تطرق فيه الى "كيفية تقبل التشبيهات الاعلامية للمجتمع العربي في الاعلام الاسرائيلي عند الشبيبة العرب" ، حيث ابرز البحث " ان تمثيل المواطنين العرب في الاعلام الإسرائيلي هو عادةً سيء ومهين وان التمثيل يتمحور عادة حول احداث سرقة، اجرام، عبء امني وسياسي على كيان الدولة ولا يتطرق للامور الايجابية ولا حتى للصعوبات والتحديات التي تواجه الوسط العربي في البلاد مثل: سبل البحث عن فرص العمل، هدم البيوت، الشح في الميزانيات، الاوضاع الاقتصادية والاجتماعية البغيضة والكثير من الامور" .
وعللت لجنة التحكيم المكونة من د رافي مان، د. سوريال راشي ويسرائيل ميداد " ان البحث يشكل اهمية كبرى للأبحاث في عالم الصحافة الاسرائيلية ، وساهم اسهاماً بالغاً في خروقات الصحافة العبرية ويشكل البحث تحدياً جديداً بالنسبة للصحافة الإسرائيلية على وجه الخصوص الا وهي حق التمثيل للمواطنين العرب في وسائل الاعلام الإسرائيلية بموجب القانون".
وتمعضت اللجنة من نتائج البحث واصفةً " انها خطيرة جدا لدور الصحافة في البلاد ولحق المواطنين العرب في التمثيل الجيد في الصحافة العبرية " ، مؤكدةً " ان هذا البحث يضيف طبقة أخرى من البحوث عن وسائل الإعلام والأقليات من حيث أنه يجلب مواقفهم تجاه التمثيل في وسائل الاعلام العبرية، فضلا عن المشاعر، ومواضيع تغطيتهم ".
يشار هنا الى ان البحث كان عن طريق جامعة بن غوريون وذلك عن طريق قسم الاعلام في الجامعة تحت اشراف البروفيسورة نيلي اليس.
كما ان وسائل الاعلام العبرية على مختلف انواعها اجمعت التطرق لهذا البحث خاصة وانها تعتبر في وجهة نظرها؛ انها يسارية، الامر الذي رفضه ابو قويدر خلال البحث حيث يقول ابو قويدر " انه ومن خلال اللقاءات الصحافية فان الصحافة الإسرائيلية هي يسارية بحسب منظور الصحافة والمجتمع اليهودي ولكن هي عمليا تتأطر في الجناح اليميني المتشدد حسب نتائج البحث".

An approximate (Google-improved) translation:

Aref Abu Qwaider Gains Israeli media criticism awardPanorama03/11/2013In a grand ceremony in the Sokolov House in the city of Tel Aviv, has - as every year - Israel's Media Watch granted an award for this academic year 2013,Negev resident Aref Abu Qwaider was awarded a prize for the best academic research which touched on "How to accept media images of the Arab community in the Israeli media by young Arabs", where leading research "that represent the Arab citizens in the Israeli media is usually bad and humiliating and representation centered usually around events of theft, criminality, the burden of security and a political structure of the state and does not address the things positive, not even of the difficulties and challenges facing the Arab sector in the country such as: ways to search for jobs, house demolitions, the scarcity of budgets, economic and social conditions obnoxious and a lot of things. "

It was explained by the jury, consisting of Dr. Rafi Mann, Dr. Tsuriel Rashi and Yisrael Medad "The search is of great significance for the research in the world of the Israeli press, and helped contribute heavily to the breaches Hebrew press and a search a new challenge for the Israeli press, in particular, namely the right of representation of Arab citizens in the Israeli media under the law...it a very serious role of the press in the country and the right of Arab citizens in well represented in the Hebrew press," asserting that "this research adds another layer of research on media and minorities in that it brings their attitudes toward representation in the media Hebrew , as well as feelings, and topics covered. "

Reference is made to the search was by Ben-Gurion University and through the media department at the university under the supervision of Prof. Nili Wallis.

As the media Hebrew on different kinds unanimous addressed for this search, especially as it is in its view; she left, which was rejected by Abu blasted through research, where he says Abu Qwaider "that through meetings press the Israeli press is leftist, according to the perspective of the press and the Jewish community, but is practically right-wing extremist by the results of research. "

Two more pics:

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Haaretz To Be Sued; Whose Attacking the Media Now?

Reported via Walla (in Hebrew):-

Anat Kam intends to file suit against the newspaper "Haaretz" and Uri Blau, due to it exposing her as the journalist's source announced attorney Ilan Bombach, during an appeal filed up to the Supreme Court against the sentence of four and a half years imposed on her for handing over secret IDF documents to Blau.  However, the claim will be filed only after the appeal decision, which depends on the sentencing Blau at the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court, after reaching a plea bargain with the prosecution for possession of confidential information.

And this after all the left/liberal camp attacked us for daring to attack the freedom of the press and cause it

Look who is now calling the kettle black - Kam, the heroine of the anti-occupationists, is suing the...press.

Ha!

^

LOL From David Cameron

Rebekah Brooks:

Cameron signed off texts "DC" and sometimes "LOL" – until Brooks explained this meant "laugh out loud", not "lots of love".

And one more:

Brooks said it was not fair to say politicians lived in fear of newspapers.

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Were Jewish Journalists Discriminated Against?

As my veteran blog-followers know, I have documented over the years the policy of State Department discrimination directed at Jews.  It takes the form of ignoring the existence of, now, 360,000 Jews residing in a territory overseen by the American Consulate-General based in Jerusalem. (see here; and here)

That territory is, at present, Judea and Samaria (it used to include the Gaza District).

Any activity of a cultural, business, sport, social welfare, artistic or educational character is restricted for Arabs only.  Jews who live in the territory are ignored.

I have attempted to interest US Jewish leaders, both liberal and others, Christians, Congressmen and journalists.  No luck.

Now I caught this story, via IMRA:

Palestinians to Boycott US Reception on Press Freedom Day

RAMALLAH, May 2, 2012 (WAFA) – Twenty Palestinian unions, including the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), called Wednesday for a boycott of a reception organized by the US consulate in Jerusalem to be held in Ramallah on Thursday on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, according to a statement issued by the unions.

...The US consulate has invited Palestinian journalists to a reception planned for [last]Thursday in Ramallah to mark press freedom day...

I do not know of one journalist who lives and works here in Yesha who was invited.  Of course, the Pals. didn't invite us to their event as we can never be "Palestinians", I suppose.

Why are Jews shunned? To be avoided?

Not to be accepted into polite diplomatic society?

Is it that they accept the Palestinian Authority diktat - and philosophy - that although some of us are even American citizens, we are not to share in American tax payers dollars for programs, events, ceremonies, seminars, grants, etc. simply because we are Jewish and living in part of our national homeland.

This I consider truly intolerable.  And immoral.

To be clear, we are invited to the Independence Day bash, so this is not a blanket discrimination but 99% of actual foreign aid or programs are off-limits.

Why don't you write your elected official - local, state and national - and complain.

After all, the PA has been oppressing its journalists.  The US protested?  Actually, yes:-

...Americans continue to vigorously debate how to balance freedom of the press and freedom of expression with other societal obligations.  At the same time, we cannot lose sight of certain universal principles. As Albert Camus once said, “A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.”

It is for this reason that the U.S. Government has been honest with its friends when we believe these principles are not being upheld. Last week, we made clear our concern regarding some recent actions by the PA. We are similarly candid with the Israeli government regarding issues related to freedom of the press. And each year, in our annual report on human rights, we document the many restrictions on journalists in Gaza at the hands of Hamas...

But what of the restrictions the Consulate places upon we journalists, Jews residing in communities in Judea and Samaria?  Not even a "separate-but-equal" reception?


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What's The BCEIRPP?

It stands for:

The Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the

Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People 

as in this:

The Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People is deeply troubled by the recent decision by the Israeli Cabinet to "legalize" three unauthorized settlement outposts in the West Bank: "Sansana," "Rechelim" and "Bruchin." While Israel, the occupying Power, has blatantly supported and engaged in the expansion of illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, these brazen actions, spearheaded by Prime Minister Netanyahu himself, amount to the first official establishment of new settlements in the West Bank in 20 years, according to the Israeli watchdog organization Peace Now. In the meantime, the Israeli Government is also intensifying its efforts to thwart the evacuation of the "Ulpana" outpost ordered by the Supreme Court.


It must be clearly reiterated that all Israeli settlements remain illegal under article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, as reaffirmed in numerous Security Council and General Assembly resolutions and the 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Wall. Israeli settlement activities also run directly counter to Road Map obligations...

Sites for Pal. news:
 
Ma'an
 
WAFA
 
PNN
 
Palestine Times
 
OP
 
Palestine Chronicle
 
Palestine Review
 
Al-Qassam

JMCC

PIC

Pal. Telegraph

Pal. Solidarity

PSC

BDS


 
 
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Second Best Headline This Week

With Libya's Ascendant Islamists: 'Don't Get the Wrong Idea'

TIME


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Best Headline of the Week

Exactly what is being implied here:

Palestinians grapple with non-violence

To define,

grap·ple, verb (used without object)

1. to hold or make fast to something, as with a grapple.

2. to use a grapple.

3. to seize another, or each other, in a firm grip, as in wrestling; clinch.

4. to engage in a struggle or close encounter (usually followed by with ): He was grappling with a boy twice his size.

5. to try to overcome or deal (usually followed by with ): to grapple with a problem.

Well, number 5 just might be a non-violent activity, but...

With Pals., I doubt it.


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Mazar or Miar? What The Foot(e)!

Where was Lord Caradon in the first week of December 1937? 

Well, as Hugh Foot, he was in Mandatory Palestine, posted in Mandate Palestine between 1929–37 and Transjordan (1939–43).  This Foote was outside of Acre:-

Before dawn one morning last week at Nablus a detachment of native policemen and soldiers, led by British Assistant District Commissioner W. Foote, moved off into the hills of northern Palestine. Their destination was the tiny Arab village of Mazar. With the squad moved armored cars. As they crept up on the village in the grey morning light, two British planes droned overhead. The Arabs scrambled from their houses to find their village surrounded.

Striding forward, Commissioner Foote threatened to wipe out the entire settlement unless the Arab villagers produced and delivered... (*)

Reference to Hugh Foot: A.

And if you think that's strange, read on:

Abu Said Aburish, Grand old man of the TIME Beirut bureau
04 May 2005

Abu Said Aburish became part of the plot, during the Arab Revolt of 1936 against British rule in Palestine, to assassinate District Governor Hugh Foot. The plan was to shoot Foot as he left his residence in the morning. Fortunately for Foot, who later as the British United Nations ambassador Lord Caradon would be the author of the famous UN Resolution 242 of 1967, British military intelligence learned of the conspiracy.

Foot would watch Aburish ride his bicycle around and around the house waiting for his chance to strike. When Aburish was safely at the back of the house, Foot went to his car. Eventually, Aburish gave up. He later referred to himself as "the most inept assassin in history".

Shortly afterwards, he left the underground to become a journalist. He pursued this career until his retirement from Time magazine, where he was the Beirut bureau's grand old man for 37 years, in 1989.

He was born Mohammed Khalil Aburish in Bethany, Palestine, in 1909, the third son of the village chief, Khalil Aburish....In 1934 he married Soraya Shahine. Her father, Dr Musa Shahine, advised Mufti Haj Amin Husseini, leader of the Arab Higher Committee, during a time of increasing tension between native Palestinian Arabs and European Jewish settlers...A favourite of the Mufti's, Abu Said Aburish undertook occasional assignments - like the feeble attempt on Hugh Foot - for the Arab nationalists. He and two friends opened the Orient Taxi Company, the first telephone taxi firm in the Middle East. As a taxi driver, Aburish met many foreign journalists and the Mufti asked him to explain the Palestinian cause to them.

Aburish became a journalist himself, working as an assistant to the legendary O'Dowd Gallagher of the Daily Mail. "O.D.", as he liked to sign his articles, was a tireless campaigner whose signature still hangs on the wall of Fink's Bar in west Jerusalem. Aburish also spent time at Fink's Bar...The Daily Mail sacked him when its editors learned that the reason he had been able to scoop his colleagues over the story of the bombing of the Palestine Post was that he knew about it beforehand.

In Beirut, Aburish fared better than most of the other Palestinian refugees. The New York Times hired him to assist its correspondent there. He moved to Newsweek, when the magazine asked him to open its Beirut bureau. He concluded that one Newsweek staffer was in fact working for the CIA, so he switched to Time magazine.

And then again,

BRITISH forces responded to the presence of terrorists in the Arab village of Miar, north of Haifa, by blowing up house after house in October 1938.

"When the troops left, there was little else remaining of the once-busy village except a pile of mangled masonry," The New York Times reported.

The declassified documents refer to an incident in Jaffa in which a handcuffed prisoner was shot by the British police.

Under Emergency Regulation 19b, the British Mandate government could demolish any house located in a village where terrorists resided, even if that particular house had no direct connection to terrorist activity. Mandate official Hugh Foot later recalled: "When we thought that a village was harboring rebels, we'd go there and mark one of the large houses. Then, if an incident was traced to that village, we'd blow up the house we'd marked."

The High Commissioner for Palestine, Harold MacMichael, defended the practice: "The provision is drastic, but the situation has demanded drastic powers."

(*)

with help from ChallahHuAkbar, amanged to retrieve this:

...to the British the aged Sheik Farhan al Sadi.

After this 75-year-old Arab dignitary had been told of the British ultimatum, he crawled out of a wheat bin, gave himself up.

Two days later the Sheik was accused of "possessing arms"—something every Arab sheik possesses—advised that if convicted under Britain's new emergency decree in Palestine the penalty would be Death.

Arraigned before a court martial of three British officers, the Sheik Farhan refused to utter a word to the Court, kept repeating to himself passages from the Koran. His lawyer entered a plea of "not guilty," the court sentenced him to Death, and on the sixth morning after he crawled out of the wheat bin Sheik Farhan al Sadi was hanged by the neck until dead at Acre.

While Arab public opinion was horrified.

British public opinion approved, for several reasons. British authorities in Palestine say that the Sheik Farhan was a leader of terrorist activities against such few Arab bigwigs as are known to be friendly to the British, or at least willing to negotiate. The British say that among the "arms" which Sheik Farhan was found to "possess" was one engraved with the name of a recently-assassinated pro-British Arab leader, Radi Abboushi. Such suspicions and circumstantial evidence might not hang a man in England, but the Near East is the Near East.

On the Sheikh:

Al-Qassam provided a unique model for Palestinians as he declared revolution and was among its first martyrs. Al-Qassam was right when he said before the battle began that he, together with his comrades, would be the spark which would ignite the revolution all over the country. Indeed, his martyrdom was the beginning rather than the end of his movement. It is possible to say that the three martyrs (al-Qassam “the Syrian”, Zibawi “the Palestinian” and Muhammad Hanafi “the Egyptian”) sent a message to the world that the Jihad in Palestine and facing the Zionist project, is an Islamic and Arab issue (besides its universal dimension), which is not confined to Palestinians.

The fifth and last point is that many historians stop at al-Qassam’s martyrdom and do not mention the impact of his organization and the important role it played in the Palestinian Revolt 1936 and even in the war of 1948.

Actually, it was al-Qassam organization “al-Jihadiyyah” which kindled the Revolt in Palestine, after the operation it executed on 15/4/1936 under the command of Farhan al-Sa‘di, al-Qassam’s successor. In addition, it was al-Qassam organization itself which ignited the second phase of this Revolt, on 26/9/1937, when two of its members, Muhammad Abu Ja‘b and Sheikh Mahmud Dirawi, assassinated Louis Andrews—the British governor of the Galilee (North Palestine).


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