Does Social Media Give Israel An Advantage in Public Diplomacy?

One of the last speakers to address the Jewish New Media Summit 2 weeks ago was Emmanuel Nahshon, spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He spoke on the topic of "Israel and the Media: Challenges and Opportunities."

Emmanuel Nahshon, spokesman for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs
Image cropped from video

The New Media

Nahshon noted that there are between 250 and 300 foreign journalists posted in Israel on a permanent basis, even while the nature of media in the 21st century is changing. "Classical" media is in a battle with social media, and losing its importance.

This change impacts on how the Foreign Ministry now does business. As Nahshon puts it:

Is There A Pattern of New York Times Bias Against Israel?

Last week, The Algemeiner held a discussion about The New York Times and its coverage of both Israel and of Jews in general.

Entitled, "The New York Times and the Jews," it was hosted by Dovid Efune, the Editor-in-Chief of the Algemeiner and featured Ira Stoll, Laurel Leff and Dovid Goldman. Ira Stoll writes a regular column for the Algemeiner, where he critiques the New York Times coverage of both Israel and of Jews. Laurel Leff is the author of Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper. Ari Goldman was a journalist with the New York Times for 20 years, from the 1970's to the 1990's and now teaches journalism at Columbia University.

Dovid Efune, Ira Stoll, Laurel Leff and Ari Goldman discuss "The New York Times and the Jews"

Lies, Damn Lies and The Gaza Riots

Not surprisingly, journalists and the media in general continue to take their cue from Hamas terrorists and insist on describing attacks on Israel's border and attempts to infiltrate as peaceful demonstrations.

At the start of the organized riots, NBC informed us that

The sit-in demonstration is set to culminate on May 15 — the day after Israeli independence
NBC News, April 5, 2018

Sit in?
If you listen closely, the voices you will hear are definitely not singing kumbaya.

Still, after 6 weeks, the media has begun to notice a thing or two, interspersed among the required proclamation of peaceful demonstrations.

What Is It About "Israeli Settlements Are Not An Impedimet To Peace" That The Media Can't Understand?

It did seem like a straightforward statement by Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Israeli settlements:

“The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years. While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal. As the President has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region. The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month.”

If Israel Has Not Been Building Settlements, Why Are the White House and Media Claiming It Is?

"[T]housands of new settlements are being constructed...you saw tens of thousands of settlements being constructed"
Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, December 23, 2016

On December 23rd, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2344 was passed 14-0 with one abstension --  the United States. One of the key points of that resolution was the clear declaration that Israeli settlements are illegal. Not "illegitimate", as per US policy in the past, but "illegal". The settlements were described as an impediment to peace that must be removed.

Are There Tens of Thousands of Israeli Settlements... Or 228?

That same day, Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy security advisor, gave an interview to Judy Woodruff.

Recall that Rhodes is noted for having bragged about his manipulation of the media in creating the narrative that made the Iran deal possible, despite both popular and congressional opposition. He boasted at the time about the media's lack of knowledge of world events:

Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing...We created an echo chamber...They [the seemingly independent experts] were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.

The Scarlet Letter: "A" is for Antisemite

From the looks of the election season just passed, it seems we are returning to our Puritan roots -- labeling and seeking to ostracize those guilty of Antisemitism.

Or maybe its more like the Salem witch trials, using arcane tests to divine Antisemitic intent from articles and quotes on the one hand and the testimony of an ex-wife on the other, revealing membership in the cult of the alt-right.

Welcome to 2016.

It seems the usefulness of the "Nazi" comparison has its limitations.
Calling someone a racist in general or saying they are bigoted against African Americans and women - that works.
But labeling someone an antisemite, now there is something that has really caught on.

Who knew there were so many, who were so eager to be on the lookout to protect the Jewish community!?

We Do Not Speak Their Name! Why Can't The Media Identify Terrorists As Palestinians?

In the media coverage of Sunday's Palestinian terrorist attack, we are reminded yet again that the Palestinians are They Who Must Not Be Named:

Two people dead after drive-by shooting at Jerusalem tram stop https://t.co/XW7yF7IfK8

— The Guardian (@guardian) October 9, 2016

Toronto Star Fixates on Fake Number of Palestinian Refugees, Despite Correction

CAMERA has prompted a correction by The Toronto Star in its article about Artist Ai Weiwei’s refugee documentary takes him to Gaza.

They write Toronto Star Corrects Inflated Number of Palestinian Refugees:

CAMERA has prompted correction of a Toronto Star photo caption which grossly inflated the number of Palestinians displaced in the 1948 war. The erroneous caption last week had stated:

The number of Palestinians who were displaced during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s establishment is estimated at more than five million people.

5 Anti-Israel Memes in the Media Broken Down

In a recent article countering media bias in general and New York Times bias in particular, Stephen Flatow invites us: Let’s play the ‘blame Israel game’ with The New York Times, examining on how the game is played by Steven Erlanger. Erlanger focuses on Sa'ir, a Palestinian Arab town where 12 Palestinian Arabs have been killed, a town where he claims Anger in a Palestinian Town Feeds a Cycle of Violence

Here is one of Erlanger's examples that Flatow examines:

Erlanger describes a recent funeral for another local fatality: Moyyad Jabarin, 19, who was “killed at the Beit Anoun checkpoint after trying to stab a soldier.” The Times reporter then quotes Sakit Jaradat, father of the aforementioned Raed, saying that his son and the others were angry because “they have lost hope and dignity, they are humiliated at the checkpoints, and now we are afraid.” Erlanger notes that Palestinian leaders see “the young dead as martyrs to the cause of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.”

Flatow then breaks down the convenient memes journalists unquestioningly parrot (emphasis added):

Does NBC Have An Ayman Mohyeldin Problem?

Fox News addresses the issue of media bias in its reporting of the Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israelis.

Watch:

Raymond Ibrahim: The New York Times Defends Al-Qaeda

The following by Raymond Ibrahim is reposted here with permission of Middle East Forum:

The New York Times Defends Al-Qaeda

by Raymond Ibrahim
Gatestone Institute
June 11, 2014

http://www.meforum.org/4722/the-new-york-times-defends-al-qaeda

Why are some of the biggest Western mainstream media outlets—especially the New York Times (NYT)—often apologetic, not only for radical Islamists, but for al-Qaeda, an organization responsible for, among other atrocities, killing nearly 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001?

A recent NYT report titled "Abduction of Girls an Act Not Even Al Qaeda Can Condone" tries to exonerate al-Qaeda of the actions of another jihadi organization, Nigeria's Boko Haram—when both groups are not only affiliated but remarkably similar in outlook and method. The report's opening sentence summarizes its thesis: "As word spread like wildfire on Twitter and Facebook that Nigerian militants were preparing to auction off more than 200 kidnapped schoolgirls in the name of Islam, a very different Internet network started quietly buzzing too," one which, according to the NYT, reflects "the dismay of fellow jihadists at the innocent targets of Boko Haram's violence":

Mideast Media Sampler 1/17/14: Media Still Insists On Distorting Facts on Ariel Sharon

by David Gerstman, contributing blogger at Legal Insurrection

Ariel Sharon Misconstrued

Ariel Sharon: The Media still insists his visit to Kotel started
intifada -- despite Palestinian admissions to the contrary
Credit: Legal Insurrection / Photo:  Government Press Office / Flickr ]

I never expected Ariel Sharon to be treated fairly by the mainstream media. I’d like to reiterate one point made by Prof. Jacobson in his post memorializing Sharon: Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount was not the cause of the so-called Second Intifada.

The New York Times obituary of Ariel Sharon gets it wrong:

Mideast Media Sampler 1/12/14: Media Expects Israel to Make Major Concessions in Return for Basics

by David Gerstman, contributing blogger at Legal Insurrection

Palestinians are looking for concessions, not an agreement.

Danger of 1967 borders for Israel. Credit: Legal Insurrection;
Photo: JerusalemCenter / YouTube

Exhibit A:

In June, 1999, shortly after Ehud Barak had defeated Benjamin Netanyahu to become Israel’s new prime minister, Charles Krauthammer wrote a column title, Clinton Should Have Targeted Arafat Instead.

Krauthammer noted that Arafat was going around the world to lobby support for accepting UN General Assembly resolution 181 as a basis for any peace deal.

What is that? An obsolete, defunct resolution passed by the General Assembly (unlike 242 and 338, not by the Security Council, and thus not even binding) . . . in 1947! It partitioned British Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. At the time, every single Arab state and the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee totally rejected 181. In fact, they invaded the area given to the Jews with the express purpose of wiping it off the map.

They failed. And now 50 years later, the Palestinians are converts to 181.

What’s wrong with that?

Mideast Media Sampler 01/07/2014: Media Covers For Abbas' Glorification of Murdering Jews

by David Gerstman, contributing blogger at Legal Insurrection

The Unreal Mideast of American Editorials

Kerry and Netanyahu. Credit: Legal Insurrection,
Photo: U.S. Department of State / YouTube

The New York Times and Washington Post have both recently weighed in with editorials about John Kerry’s peace process.

First the New York Times ran The Ticking Mideast Clock.

Signs of failure are everywhere. On Thursday, standing beside Mr. Kerry, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a harsh assessment of his Palestinian counterpart, President Mahmoud Abbas, and, implicitly, the prospect of a Middle East peace agreement. Days earlier, Israel let it be known that it would build more settlements in the West Bank, further poisoning the political atmosphere while shrinking the territorial space for a deal. Hard-liners in Mr. Netanyahu’s government are pushing a bill that would annex settlements in the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank, where about 6,000 Israeli settlers and 10 times as many Palestinians live.

So what did Netanyahu say?

Mideast Media Sampler 1/2/14: 2014 Ushers In More Sloppy New York Times Reporting On Peace Process

by David Gerstman, contributing blogger at Legal Insurrection

The Perils of Peacemaking

Israel releases Palestinian Terrorists. Credit: Legal Insurrection,
Photo: JewishNewsOne / YouTube

John Kerry is returning to the Middle East to present his peace plan.

Two recent articles show the way the peace process is misrepresented in the media.

Mideast Media Sampler 12/18/13: Sloppy Media Ignores Fact Israeli "Occupation" Is Over

by David Gerstman, contributing blogger at Legal Insurrection

Why Israel’s Democracy is not Endangered by the Lack of Peace

Eugene Kontorovich, professor of international law.
Credit: Legal Insurrection, Photo: mos225 / YouTube

Eugene Kontorovich wrote an important essay for Commentary, Israel, Palestine, and Democracy. Here are three critical paragraphs from the middle of the essay:

CAMERA Video: New York Times Anti-Israel Bias: Editorializing

From CAMERA:

Anti-Israel bias at The New York Times increased in late 2013, with news reporters shunning impartiality and, by expressing hostile opinions, making the supposedly objective news pages increasingly resemble the newspaper's opinion pages.

See more at New York Times Increasingly Resembles Glenn Greenwald's Advocacy Journalism

Here is the video:

Mideast Media Sampler 11/18/13: The Truth About The History of Lydda/Lod

by David Gerstman, contributing blogger at Legal Insurrection

Thomas Friedman: The Incredible Shrinking Columnist

Readers should not be buying what Thomas Friedman is selling.
Credit: Legal Insurrection -- Photo: AspenInstitute / YouTube

The featured image of Thomas Friedman above comes from a talk he gave about many of the marvels of modern technology. At the beginning he says that you have “every bit of knowledge available to you” from Google. It’s a bit of an overstatement, but his point is essentially correct.

One particular effective use of Google is fact checking writers like Friedman, who make unsubstantiated claims. In Friedman’s case, it happens quite a bit. He has a habit of taking great sounding ideas and turning them into columns. But that doesn’t mean that he’s right. Often he leaves out critical information.

This week Friedman did this once again.

Mideast Media Sampler 11/12/13: New York Times and Washington Post Cover for Kerry's Iran Failure

by David Gerstman, contributing blogger at Legal Insurrection

John Kerry’s MSM Cheerleaders

John Kerry on Meet The Press -- among friends. Photo: Legal Insurrection
(newsnation6 / YouTube)

I almost feel bad for Secretary of State, John Kerry. This really has been a brutal few days for him.

Mideast Media Sampler 11/11/13: Media on Iran Deal Ignores Iran Role In Syria and Global Terror

by David Gerstman, contributing blogger at Legal Insurrection

 Media focuses on politics of Geneva negotiations, not why the Mullah regime is a threat.

CNN Christiane Amanpour interviews Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.
Photo: L. N TIDINGS / YouTube

Over the past few days the reporting from Geneva changed from anticipation of an imminent deal to a final “no deal.” Or “no deal” for now.

The New York Times reported Talks With Iran Fail to Produce a Nuclear Agreement. As almost all reporting on the P5+1 talks with Iran go, it gives the credit to (or places the blame on) France for the failure of the two sides to reach an agreement.