Study Analyzes The Anti-Israel Propaganda In Reuters News Coverage

Elder of Ziyon has a post about a new study that based on careful analysis has come to the conclusion that Reuters engages in anti-Israel propaganda.

This article from PRWeb lays it out pretty well: Academic Study Finds Reuters Middle East Coverage Tainted by Propaganda, Violates Company Principles:

Roosevelt University academic study documents systematic use of propaganda by world's largest news agency.

A study published in the November/December issue of the Journal of Applied Business Research finds that Reuters coverage of the Middle East conflict is systematically tainted by propaganda and influences readers to side with the Palestinians and Arab states against the Israelis.

REUTERSGATE SINKS TO NEW LEVEL.

News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.

...The deception was only revealed after a 13-year-old Finnish schoolboy contacted a local newspaper to tell them the images looked identical to those used in the movie.

It's the unforced errors that show what you're made of.

[Hat tip: LGF]

Technorati Tag: Reuters and Reutersgate.

Hijab Hijinks

Jack Straw writes that "wearing the full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult".

A British education minister says he supports universities that ban Islamic students from wearing veils.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on Tuesday that Muslim immigrant women should not be completely “hidden” behind full veils if they want to integrate and become part of Italy’s future.

Tony Blair said the full face veils by Muslim women is a "mark of separation" and made some "outside the community feel uncomfortable".

Allahpundit notes that the latest opposition to the veil comes from...Egypt:

Saleh, known in Egypt as “the women’s mufti” for her numerous fatwas, or religious edicts relating to women, rebutted on daily al-Sharq Al-Awsat, that hers was “a personal comment on an increasingly common phenomenon but which was not meant in any way to offend women.”

“There is a significant difference between the hijab, a simple veil which frames the face, and the niqab, which leaves only the eyes visible” she added. “The first is a religious duty, but the second is a sheer cultural convention, which has no raison d’etre in Islamic sources” she said.

Saleh seems to be echoing something more controversial that Amir Taheri wrote back in 2004:

The headgear in question has nothing to do with Islam as a religion. It is not sanctioned anywhere in the Koran, the fundamental text of Islam, or the hadith (traditions) attributed to the Prophet.

This headgear was invented in the early 1970s by Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had won the leadership of the Lebanese Shi'ite community.

In an interview in 1975 in Beirut, Sadr told this writer that the hijab he had invented was inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic nuns, itself inspired by that of Christian women in classical Western paintings. (A casual visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or the Louvres in Paris, would reveal the original of the neo-Islamist hijab in numerous paintings depicting Virgin Mary and other female figures from the Old and New Testament.)

Sadr's idea was that, by wearing the headgear, Shi'ite women would be clearly marked out, and thus spared sexual harassment, and rape, by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian gunmen who at the time controlled southern Lebanon.

Sadr's neo-hijab made its first appearance in Iran in 1977 as a symbol of Islamist-Marxist opposition to the Shah's regime. When the mullahs seized power in Tehran in 1979, the number of women wearing the hijab exploded into tens of thousands.

In 1981, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic, announced that "scientific research had shown that women's hair emitted rays that drove men insane." To protect the public, the new Islamist regime passed a law in 1982 making the hijab mandatory for females aged above six, regardless of religious faith. Violating the hijab code was made punishable by 100 lashes of the cane and six months imprisonment.

By the mid 1980s, a form of hijab never seen in Islam before the 1970s had become standard gear for millions of women all over the world, including Europe and America.

But the bottom line is, just what does Europe think they are doing?

Of all the ways to confront the growing problem of Islamist violence in Europe, why tackle an issue that is more likely to encourage moderates to join the extremists in protesting what they interpret as an assault on their religion?

Europe is going after veils while failing to go after those who in speech and action encourage the Islamist extremists.

They are likely to fail in the former while losing the war against the latter.

Technorati Tag: Hijab and Blair and Amir Taheri.

European Reacting To Islamists: This Is The Easy Part

From Reuters:

Pope Benedict said on Wednesday Christians could not allow their beliefs and identity to be diluted for the sake of dialogue with other religions.

"We have to remember that this identity of ours calls for strength, clarity, and courage in the world in which we live," he told pilgrims and tourists at his weekly general audience.

Since he made controversial comments on Islam a month ago, the question of how much dialogue Catholics should have with other religions has become a point of debate in the Church.

..."But this path of dialogue that is so necessary must not lead us to forget the duty to firmly underscore the tenets and identity of our Christian faith that cannot be renounced."

...The leader of more than one billion Catholics has several times expressed regret for the reaction to the speech, saying his words were misunderstood. But he has stopped short of the unequivocal apology wanted by Muslims.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that Europe may be re-evaluating its approach:

Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line regarding its Muslim minorities: more people in the political mainstream are arguing that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values.

...[a worry] shared by centrists across Europe angry at terror attacks in the name of religion on a continent that has largely abandoned it, and disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence.

For years those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians — are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits.

So you have Christians on the one side taking a stronger stand for their religion even while leaving the possibility of dialog open. On the other side you have the Europeans, who have decided that there are limits, even to tolerance.

Jack Straw writes that "wearing the full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult".

Meanwhile, A British education minister says he supports universities that ban Islamic students from wearing veils.

This is the easy part.
Now let's see what happens after the riots begin.

Technorati Tag: Pope Benedict and Jack Straw and Islam.

Ramadan Rioting, Media Non-Reporting

From The Brussels Journal:

Last Sunday the Islamic holy month of Ramadan began. It lasts until 23 October. Many will remember last year’s ramadan riots, which set France and, to a lesser extent, parts of Belgium and Denmark, alight. Rioting went on for three weeks. Each night thousands of cars were set alight by immigrant youths, until the French and Belgian governments ordered the police to no longer divulge any information about the disturbances, after which the media stopped reporting, the youths lost interest and the number of nightly “carbecues” in France dropped to the “normal” level of about 50.

Now, as of Wednesday, Brussels has suffered 3 days of rioting:

It looks as if immigrants youths want to turn nightly rioting during the Islamic holy month of ramadan into an annual tradition. Around 8:30pm last night violence erupted again in Brussels, the capital of Europe. The riots centered on the Brussels Marollen quarter and the area near the Midi Train Station, where the international trains from London and Paris arrive. Youths threw stones at passing people and cars, windows of parked cars were smashed, bus shelters were demolished, cars were set ablaze, a youth club was arsoned and a shop was looted. Two molotov cocktails were thrown into St.Peter’s hospital, one of the main hospitals of central Brussels. The fire brigade was able to extinguish the fires at the hospital, but youths managed to steal the keys of the fire engine.

The current riots apparently were set off by the suspicious death of an inmate in the Vorst prison. Meanwhile, according to the article, France also is afraid of riots during Ramadan.
Another source of Belgian concern is that municipal elections will be held on October 8th, and they are expected to be won by an anti-immigrant "islamophobic" party with 38.6% of the vote, as opposed to 33% of the vote six years ago.

Snapped Shot, who is covering the story extensively, has noticed that the MSM is virtually ignoring the story--while Reuters has reported on it, none of the other wire services or major papers have.

Apparently the same policy of smothering the story that supposedly solved the problem last time by decreasing the level of 'interest' in the riots--is being used now. And the media, as always, can be expected to cooperate.

Technorati Tag: Ramadan and Belgium and France.

The Great Thing About the Pope Controversy...

is the ridiculous quotes:

The head of Cairo’s Al-Azhar university Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi said Saturday the pontiff’s comments “betray a clear ignorance of Islam and attribute to the faith things which have nothing to do with it”.

You mean like Mohammed's "command to spread by the sword the faith he preached"? Who's kidding whom?

"The declarations from the pope are more dangerous than the cartoons, because they come from the most important Christian authority in the world — the cartoons just came from an artist," said Diaa Rashwan, an analyst in Cairo, Egypt, who studies Islamic militancy.

The cartoons 'just came from an artist'--now they realize that?

"He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world," Kapusuz told Turkish state media. "It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades."

...at a time when the Moslem world is reviving the mentality of the Jihad that brought about the original Crusades in the first place.

"One would expect a religious leader such as the pope to act and speak with responsibility and repudiate the Byzantine emperor's views in the interests of truth and harmonious relations between the followers of Islam and Catholicism," said Muhammad Abdul Bari, the council's secretary-general.

And just what have Moslems been up to "in the interests of truth and harmonious relations between the followers of Islam and Catholicism" in Bethlehem?

"Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.

If you say Islam is intolerant...you'll force them to be intolerant?

Even the good folks at Reuters are getting into the act. On the Muslim Brotherhood, which demanded a personal apology:

The Muslim Brotherhood is a political Islamist group founded in Egypt which has inspired movements across the Arab world.

And what kind of movements have the Moslem Brotherhood inspired?

As stated on its charter and its website, the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to install an Islamic totalitarian empire and a worldwide Caliphate, through stages designed to Islamize targeted nations by whatever means available. Although the Brotherhood itself renounced violence in the 1970s, many of its branches continue to practice violence through terrorism and assassination.

Oh, those kinds of movements.

Technorati Tag: Israel.

The Al Dura Trial In France

If you are following the Al-Dura Trial in France, you have to read what Nidra Poller has to say.

One question she asks is how France 2 could take the risk of a lawsuit against those who have come out saying that the Al-Dura incident is fake.

But she also touches on the open acknowledgement that the Palestinian Arabs regularly fake news events:

Many journalists who are unashamedly hostile to Israel admit that the Palestinians produce falsified news but they find nothing to deplore in this practice—it's simply propaganda, and everyone does it. A France 2 official acknowledged in the presence of news director Arlette Chabot, whose honor is allegedly sullied by Philippe Karsenty, that the Palestinians regularly enact fake battle scenes, some of which are reported as news in Western media.

All of these people freely admit that some, much, or even most of the material contained in the 27-minute video shot by Talal Abu Rahmeh at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip on that fatal day are in fact staged scenes. (French journalists admit in private that the al-Dura scene, too, was staged; they say everyone knows it, no one will ever admit it publicly, this sort of revelation is totally and absolutely impossible in France, and besides it's an old story and no one is interested.)
For four years Enderlin claimed to have absolute proof of the authenticity of the al-Dura report in the form of 27-minutes of footage, the golden outtakes, which he refused to make available for independent investigation. When Rosenzweig, Jeambar, and Leconte described, in articles and radio interviews, what they had seen, the golden outtakes were reduced, by reverse alchemy, to dross.

Another point she makes is the timing of the lawsuit itself. Given the background of the recent Israel-Hezbollah war--with the revelations of faked pictures, staged photographs and manipulation of the media--there is an interest in the proceedings that France 2 could not have anticipated, or wanted.

At the time when the lawsuits were brought against Karsenty, Lurçat, and Gouz, there was little reason to hope they would attract international attention. Nothing—not the initial investigation, not articles in known, unknown, and/or prestigious publications, not the lectures, meetings, books, videos, websites, letters, demonstrations, revelations—nothing had pierced the invisible wall that separated the truly fascinating documentation of a monumental hoax—with extremely grave and widespread repercussions—from the wall of indifference and confusion that blocked every attempt to bring the case to light and obtain some form of justice.

Ah, but reality is stronger than any theory, and phlogiston stands as the symbol of imposed ignorance in the face of troubling evidence. The July –August Hizbullah war against Israel brought a windfall of staged news. From Pallywood to Hizbollywood with its cohort of fauxtography the blogosphere rapidly produced a wealth of documentation on a phenomenon that replicates everything we had observed in the al-Dura case. But this time, the results were immediate. Reuters dismissed fauxtographer Adnan Hajj and withdrew his photos from their archives. The information leaped from blogs to mainstream. CNN journalist Anderson Cooper admitted he had been manipulated by Hizbullah handlers. The NY Times wriggled out of its false pieta with a lame excuse, but lame is better than nothing. Pristine cuddly toys among the ruins; Green Helmet bouncing dead kids in the air; rescue workers becoming, by turns, bereaved fathers, distressed neighbors, and Hizbullah operatives; a grieving old lady performing in front of several different ruined homesteads, all of them 100% civilian, all of them hers, all of them source of unbearable sorrow; a wounded ambulance driver miraculously cured; press cars hit by missiles and resisting better than a Merkava tank… all of this and more available for analyses that yield a coherent picture of something beyond propaganda—a weapon, a type of warfare that I call "lethal narratives."

Also take a look at Augean Stables, who besides covering the trial on his blog is also testifying at the proceedings as well.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Al-Dura and France 2 and Pallywood and Palestinians.

Will Mearsheimer and Walt Come Out With A Paper On This?

From Reuters:

Muslims urged to buy influence in world media

RIYADH (Reuters) - Muslim tycoons should buy stakes in global media outlets to help change anti-Muslim attitudes around the world, ministers from Islamic countries heard at a conference in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

Information ministers and officials meeting under the auspices of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the world's largest Islamic body, said Islam faced vilification after the September 11 attacks, when 19 Arabs killed nearly 3,000 people in U.S. cities in 2001.

"Muslim investors must invest in the large media institutions of the world, which generally make considerable profits, so that they have the ability to affect their policies via their administrative boards," OIC chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told the gathering in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

"This would benefit in terms of correcting the image of Islam worldwide," he said, calling on Muslim countries to set up more channels in widely-spoken foreign languages.

Muslim stakes in Western media are minimal. Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns 5.46 percent of media conglomerate News Corp., the Rupert Murdoch-run group behind the Fox News Channel. The U.S. channel is generally seen as right-wing and no friend of Arab or Muslim interests.

Washington's response to September 11, invading Afghanistan and Iraq and tightening civil freedoms at home as part of a wider "war on terror", has created a widespread feeling among Muslims worldwide that their religion is under attack.

A row earlier this year over Danish cartoons that depicted the Prophet Mohammed deepened the sense of a divide between Islamic culture and the West.

"The fierce attack on Islam in the five years since the September 11 attacks has forced us into a defensive position on our faith and understanding of our tolerant religion," Egyptian Information Minister Anas el-Feki said in a speech.

"Now more than ever we need a new Islamic media message that reaches all parts of the world," Feki said, citing Israel's recent 34-day war in Lebanon as one issue where Muslims needed to make their views and influence felt. [emphasis added]

Let's put aside the current pro-Arab slant of the media that brought us ReutersGate has consistently bent to the will of Moslem pressure and threats.

The story on its face is misleading. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's stake in Fox News is hardly minimal. From December of last year:

Al-Walid also criticised US media which he described as "in general ... pro-Israel." But he also accused Arabs of not being pro-active in fighting the allegedly slanted media.

He said that during last month's street protests in France, the US television network Fox -- owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in which Al-Walid himself has shares -- ran a banner saying: "Muslim riots."

"I picked up the phone and called Murdoch... (and told him) these are not Muslim riots, these are riots out of poverty," he said.

"Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots."

Only 30 minutes?

Maybe Reuters should make that:

Muslims urged to buy even more influence in world media

Another issue is the potetial election of the first Muslim to the US Congress--Keith Ellison of Minnesota. Nothing wrong with that, except for the groups he is accepting help--and money--from.

Joel Mowbray notes that Ellison has received help from CAIR:

Two of its officials have been convicted on terrorism charges, and as an organization, while CAIR forcefully attacks critics of radical Islam, it has yet to condemn by name any Islamic terror organization other than al Qaeda—which it denounced only reluctantly several months after 9/11.

CAIR’s former communications and civil rights coordinator was convicted in 2004 on terror-related charges of plotting to wage violent jihad against the U.S., and the founder of its Texas branch last year was convicted of terror-related charges.

Mowbray points out that Ellison has also received aid from other questionable sources:

Also of concern are other contributors to Ellison’s campaign.

* Shahzeb Gaziani gave $500 on July 22. He is an official with the Peace and Justice Foundation, whose president was a featured speaker at a December 2004 event titled, “A tribute to the great Islamic visionary Ayatollah Khomenei.” Khomenei, of course, called America the “Great Satan,” was responsible for the kidnappings of Americans at the Embassy in Tehran, and his regime helped create Hezbollah.

* Esam Omeish, who gave $500, is president of the Muslim American Society, which authorities believe is the political front in the U.S. for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the ideological forerunner of al Qaeda and many other Islamic terrorist organizations.

* Samir Abo Issa gave $500 on July 22. In 2003, he helped post bail for Abdelhaleem Ashqar, who is now facing trial on terror-related money laundering charges.

Mowbray also did a five part piece on Ellison at Powerline. In the last part, Mowbray writes that

A Minnesotan who does not support Keith Ellison e-mailed me his contention that I needed "something more damning than a list of checks." The problem with Keith Ellison winning the Democratic primary tomorrow in the very blue MN-05 district is much more than just the people from whom he's received
checks.

Ellison has tried to downplay his history with the Nation of Islam and its ugly penchant for racism and anti-Semitism. His willing association currently with people who are self-identified Hamas supporters, such as Awad, or any of his ilk undercuts any claim that Ellison has genuinely evolved. Anyone truly outraged by hatemongering or anti-Semitism would never accept money donated or collected by the likes of Awad, let alone stand next to him as he headlines a fundraiser.

But beyond that, we need to recognize on this 5th anniversary of 9/11 that our war is not just a military struggle or even one against supporters of terrorism. People like Nihad Awad, Shahzeb Gaziani, and Esam Omeish cannot be allowed into legitimate circles.

It's not enough to oppose "terrorism." One must also be vocal in opposing the root cause of most terrorism today: radical Islamic theology which demonizes Jews, Christians, and Americans, and holds that any non-Islamic government is inherently illegitimate.

Awad, CAIR, and Muslim-American Society, among others, are extremely vocal in their opposition, but never against radical Islam, only against its critics. They serve as the intimidation industry, doing their best to stifle even legitimate debate. They have successfully instilled fear in the media and government, which is precisely why Ellison's past with the Nation of Islam received such scant attention in the local mainstream media. Had it not been for Minnesota Democrats Exposed or Power Line, local MSM likely would have ignored it altogether.

Make no mistake about it: CAIR is an enemy of free speech, and thus an obstacle in our struggle to preserve freedom. A genuine Muslim civil rights organization could have been beneficial not just to Muslims, but the public at large. But that's not the path chosen by CAIR, who instead primarily savages critics of radical Islam, while maintaining silence on Islamic terrorism and its root cause.

CAIR already enjoys far too much legitimacy for an organization founded by two men who have both expressed explicit support for Islamic terrorism. Imagine what would happen if CAIR's executive director can claim credit for helping elect the first-ever Muslim Congressman.

It is not about denying the right to fight anti-Moslem sterotypes.
It is not about denying a Muslim the opportunity to be elected to Congress.

It is about recognizing the existence of radical Islamism, both around the world and here in the United States--and combatting it even as we acknowledge that radical Islamism does not speak on behalf of all Moslems.

CAIR is part of the problem, not the solution.
Keith Ellison has shown signs of ignoring the existence of the problem.

The issue is not Moslem influence; it is what they are doing with it.

Technorati Tag: Media Bias and Israel and Moslems.

An Honest Terrorist Is Hard To Find

The Reuters article starts off with a car stolen by Palestinian terrorists.
The headline is: Corrupt? Misguided? West Bank militants face heat

Rachmones. Get out your hankies.

"To be honest, I feel frustrated with the resistance," says Ismail Hashash, the owner of a driving school in Balata, using the general term Palestinians use for those who battle Israel.

"They don't respect the goal, which is fighting the occupation. They've been corrupted. Instead of just fighting Israel, they are involved in disputes and crime, or they just like to show off their weapons."

The very fact that the 32-year-old, who says he knows many militants as acquaintances, is willing to criticise them openly shows how the groups have fallen in his esteem.

He says the movements have lost their way, and are now filled with unemployed young men looking for direction.

Where did these young, wholesome, misguided young people go wrong?

Many explanations are given for the decline -- from the view that the long "resistance" has run out of steam to the fact that Israel has infiltrated it, turning fighters into collaborators.

Palestinian analysts say the number of those who use the term militant as a cover for a gang-like lifestyle of theft and non-political violence now exceeds those who might truly be regarded as fighters -- a clear sign of decline.

Palestinians might easily be able to differentiate between the two groups, but the trend still reflects something rotten at the heart of a once unified movement.

Something rotten?
Like blowing up women and children?

But stealing a car is what signifies a decline in Palestinian morals.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Palestinians and Terrorism.

The Next Time CAIR Screams Discrimination...

Power Line links to a

ludicrous news story comes from Agence France-Presse: an article titled "US Muslims plagued by discrimination after 9/11 attacks."

The AFP piece alleges that:

Discrimination and harassment by law enforcement have come to plague American Muslims in the years since the terrorist attacks of September 11.

There have been suspicious looks, slurs, physical attacks, extra screening at airports and arrests on groundless charges.

And it seems to be getting worse.

"Suspicious" does seem to be the operative word when it comes to these claims.

The FBI tracks such attacks under the label of 'hate crime'. What exactly is a 'hate crime'? :

A hate crime, also known as a bias crime, is a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.

The FBI breakdown of the hate crime attacks in 2004 based on anti-religious bias, shows that the Jews are far and away the majority victim of religion-based hate attacks.

Bias motivation	Incidents	Offenses	Victims	Known offenders
Anti-Jewish	954	1,003	1,076	330
Anti-Catholic	57	57	68	37
Anti-Protestant	38	43	48	28
Anti-Islamic	156	193	201	124
Anti-Other Religion	128	140	147	68
Anti-Multiple Religions, Group	35	37	39	14
Anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.	6	7	7	3
Total religion:	1,374	1,480	1,586	604

As Daniel Pipes notes, Jews constitute 69% of the victims of such attacks, while Moslems constitute 11%.

Clearly, the fact that the threat to Jews is greater is not helped by CAIR itself (some of whose board members have been convicted of having connections to terrorist groups) when in August it hosted a forum for Mearsheimer and Walt on the influence of the 'Israel Lobby'.

But Daniel Pipes goes a step further. He examines an annual report put out by CAIR entitled Unequal Protection: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005 which the media used as the basis at the time to come out with headlines about the dramatic rise in anti-Moslem hate crime.

Only one problem, according to Pipes:

We examined in detail some "examples of anti-Muslim hate crime reports received by CAIR in 2004," on p. 43, plus some "samples" on p. 53 and discovered a pattern of sloppiness, exaggeration, and distortion:

1. CAIR cites the July 9, 2004 case of apparent arson at a Muslim-owned grocery store in Everett, Washington. But investigators quickly determined that Mirza Akram, the store's operator, staged the arson to avoid meeting his scheduled payments and to collect on an insurance policy. Although Akram's antics were long ago exposed as a fraud, CAIR continues to list this case as an anti-Muslim hate crime.

2. CAIR also states that "a Muslim-owned market was burned down in Texas" on August 6, 2004. But already a month later, the owner was arrested for having set fire to his own business. Why does CAIR include this incident in its report?

3. CAIR lists the March 2005 lawsuit filed by the Salmi family for the firebombing of their family van as one example of a hate crime report it received in 2004. However, the crime named in the lawsuit occurred in March 2003, was already reported by CAIR in 2003, and should not have been tabulated again in the 2004 report.

4. CAIR reports that "a home-made bomb exploded outside of the Champions Mosque in the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas," staking its claim on eyewitness reports that on July 4, 2004, "two white males" were seen placing the bomb. We inquired about the incident and found that Spring's sheriff department could not locate any police files about an explosion. Further inquiries to the mosque and an e-mail to CAIR both went unanswered. There is scant evidence that any crime even occurred.

5. CAIR notes that "investigators in Massachusetts are still investigating a potential hate-motivated arson against the Al-Baqi Islamic Center in Springfield." However the case was long ago ruled a simple robbery, news that even CAIR's own website has posted. The Associated Press reported on January 21, 2005, that prosecutors determined the fire was set by teen-age boys "who broke into the Al-Baqi mosque to steal money and candy, then set the fire to cover their tracks." The boys, they clarified, "weren't motivated by hatred toward Muslims."

6. CAIR describes what happened to a Muslim family in Tucson, Arizona: "bullet shots pierced their home as they ate dinner in October 2004" and two months later their truck was smashed and vandalized. But the only evidence that either incident was motivated by hate of Muslims is the Dehdashti family itself, not the police. Detective Frank Rovi of Pima County Sheriff's Department, who handled the shooting investigation, said that according to the neighbors, the desert area by the Dehdashti house was often used for target practice. Neither incident was classified as a hate crime and both cases were closed by February 2005, long before the CAIR report went to press. [emphasis added]
   

Of twenty "anti-Muslim hate crimes" in 2004 that CAIR describes, at least six are invalid – and further research could likely find problems with the other fourteen instances.

Pipes goes on to give further examples.

In a follow-up post, Pipes notes that NPR did a segment on the problems with the methodology used by different groups in general to track and report bias attacks. The audio of the report is available from the NPR site. The reporter, Mike Pesca, notes that

any bias incident, from a Muslim being yelled at from a passing car, to a Muslim being profiled on a plane, can wind up in CAIR's report.

Pipes also has a post that refers to 2 posts by Michelle Malkin back in 2003--Myth of the Muslim hate crime epidemic and More Muslim hate crime myths about false accounts of hate crimes against Moslems.

The plague that the AFP report refers to is actually a plague of falsely attributed hate crimes that CAIR does not admit--let alone denounce--even after the deceit is revealed. According to The American Thinker last month:

To date, so far as I can tell, not only has CAIR not apologized for falsely accusing non-Muslims of hatred and bias in the respective communities where these hate crime hoaxes occurred, but the press releases on CAIR’s website go uncorrected even after the truth is revealed. For instance, a press release related to a staged hate crime in McAllen, Texas still appears today without any correction or update whatsoever, even though multiple media outlets, including even the New York Times, had debunked the incident as a hate crime hoax perpetrated by the “victim” almost two years ago.

The staging of hate crimes continues in July 2006--as the same article from The American Thinker describes in detail.

Besides the issue of hate crimes being staged, CAIR itself has dabbled in the kind of fake photography that would make Reuters proud. As reported in Jihad Watch on September 15 of last year, hijabs were photoshopped onto 2 women--and a man--at an interfaith vigel.

Photoshopped Photo	Actual Photo

CAIR does know how to keep itself busy.

Technorati Tag: CAIR and Islamophobia and ReutersGate.

Haveil Havalim #85 Is Up (Finally)

Sorry about the delay--it couldn't be helped, but I know people like their Sunday Haveil Havalim Fix.

My daughter--who celebrated her birthay on Shabbos with fever--has returned to a normal temperature.
Thank you for your patience.

If there are any errors, please email me at daledamos@gmail.com

Enjoy!


Jewish Fractals

Not Quite Perfect Magen Fly

Not Quite Perfect Magen Gold


Observations on Life

The Ignoble Experiment The Inevitable "Talk"

The Ignoble Experiament Life's Not Fair... And Maybe It's A Good Thing.

Me-ander Having fun at "Savta's" (Grannie's)

Psycho Toddler The Plaque (Yahrzeit Plaques--his father's and in general)


Back to School

Ra'anana Ramblings Haute cuisine in their schoolbags? posted at Ra'anana Ramblings.

Life With Estee
goodbye summer, goodbye stay-at-home mom!

Michael Zilberstein's Journal (In Russian. Michael Zilberstein, a Russian-speaking Israeli blogger, writes about the administrative measures which may be taken to stop children from going to Israeli private schools - and the justification the government has to offer - it's attempt to fight "elitism".)


Israel and Jews

Shooting Israel (Exclusive images) Just uploaded many of the hundreds of photos I shot over the last few weeks across the north of Israel during the war, in one spot, including many that I posted recently that may already be archived. There are many earlier images as well, some photographed abroad.

Miriams's Ideas
http://miriamsideas.blogspot.com/2006/08/israel-needs-death-penalty.html

Ya'aqov Ben-Yehudah presents Shimshon Cytryn Update - September 3 posted at The (not) Forgotten Prisoners of Zion.

Israel Matzav LA Times: Israel Pegs Its Pullout to Release of Captives; JPost and Haaretz: Maybe

IRIS Israel's Debacle an Opportunity for Change

Colossus of Rhodey Comics for Israel

Pillage Idiot Baseball in Israel

Blog Free A Report from an E-Pal Up North

It's Almost Supernatural Between Unilateral Withdrawal and a Hard Place

Carl in Jerusalem The first scene of Ehud Olmert's last act

Life In Israel presents What does "elite" mean? posted at Life in Israel.

Blog Free Gelatin Scandal

The (not) Forgotten Prisoners of Zion presents Shimshon Cytryn posted at The (Not) Forgotten Prisoners of Zion.

The Israeli Tikkun blog
Whom did you vote for in today’s elections?

Westbankblog Boogie Yaalon "I'm More Afraid of the Corruption in Israel Than I Am Of the Iranians" (report on Blogger Conference with Moshe (Boogie) Yaalon)

Olah Chadasha has finished the first part in a series highlighting the IDF in the Israel-Hezbollah War http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpyVxnF8CHs

Life in Israel presents Ron Arad - a TV actor? posted at Life in Israel.

Meryl Yourish The Merkava question

Bagel Blogger Will the Real Three Stooges come Down

Shiloh Musings Jerusalem of...

WestBankBlog Protesters in Neon, and Protesters in Camouflage

Atlantic Review presents Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism posted at Atlantic Review.

Media Backspin Fox News, Shalit Kidnappings Linked

A Barbaric Yawp Sorry, I Thought He Was a Jew

me-ander Survivor Rights

Greetings From French Hill One Of Those Days

Israel Rules Those Humans Do The Darndest Things

Boker Tov, Boulder Olmert vs. Kahane: The Nightline Debate

In the US

Random Thoughts 12 Year Old Jewish Girl Beaten Unconcious; Bystanders Ignore Pleas For Help

Joshua Pundit Common sense from Bill Maher - of all people

Carl in Jerusalem presents Georgetown: Islam okay, Protestantism not

A Volokh Conspiracy Non-Jewish American Politicians of Jewish Descent:


Hezbollah and Lebanon

Kesher Talk Lebanon: You are There

Dr. Sanity Hezbollah's 'Historic' Victory

Gates of Vienna Old Nasrallah Had a Farm

Israellycool "The Most Significant Piece of Reporting To Come Out of the War"

The Baltimore Reporter wow, a Democrat tough on terrorists…. (Lantos)

Joshua Pundit Congressman Tom Lantos:No US aid to Lebanon unless UNIFIL patrols Syrian border

Wizbang A Must Read On The Israel - Hezbollah Conflict

Gates of Vienna Are Your Going to Believe Me or Your Lying Eyes?

Haganah Reality check? posted at haganah.

Cross Currents The World Council of Churches and Making Religion Irrelevant

Israelly Cool Responsible


Judaism

Blog Free Elul

Reb Shraga Feivel – A Seething Musical Spirit

There are no feminists on a sinking ship presents Deconstructing Arachim/Discovery arguments Part 2...Shmitta. posted at There are no feminists on a sinking ship.

There are no feminists on a sinking ship presents Deconstructing Arachim/Discovery arguments Part 1 posted at There are no feminists on a sinking ship.

Letters of Thought presents On Chassidic Historical Revisionism posted at Letters of Thought.

A Simple Jew presents Guest Posting From Rabbi Dovid Sears: Eynei Chakhomim: Eyes Of The Sages posted at A Simple Jew.

Random Thoughts: Morality Without Religion- A Comment to The Self-Righteous

Random Thoughts: Frum & Gay

Serandez http://serandez.blogspot.com/2006/08/Feminism in Halacha--2 points

Sweet Rose The Plight of the BT


The Media

Esser Agaroth CNN Complicity? Or Parapraxisity? posted at Esser Agaroth.

Cross Currents The Methodology of Media Bias

Israel Medad Picking your way through a story

Israel Medad BBC Publishes Item to the 4th Degree

Villainous Company NYTimes Watch: It's Not Easy Being Blind

Confederate Yankee Armored Vehicle Experts: Reuters News Vehicle Not Hit By Israeli Missile


The UN

Elder of Ziyon UN hypocrisy shines through

Done With Mirrors Self-Defense is Naughty


The Palestinians

Elder of Ziyon Extrajudicial Killing of PRC leader


Had to put them somewhere...together

Secular BlashphemyAhmadinejad wrote letter to Merkel about the Holocaust

Jewish Current Issues Postscript to A Mel Gibson Postscript

Yisrael Medad When Chomsky was a Zionist Youth Leader

Meryl Yourish The Nasrallah interview: Some thoughts

Soccer Dad Milbank vs. Mearsheimer


You can submit one or two of your best Israel or Judaism related posts to dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.

If you'd like to host an upcoming edition you can e-mail Soccer Dad at the same address.

You can also submit entries to Haveil Havalim using either Conservative Cat's submission form or the submission form at BlogCarnival.

Listed at the Truth Laid Bear Ubercarnival.

Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, haveil havalim, Israel, Judaism.

For Hezbollah, Charity Begins At Home

..in the back room where you keep your printing press.

In Counterfeit News, David Frum writes:

Perhaps you saw the images in your newspaper or on television:

"A Lebanese man counts U.S dollar bills received from Hizbollah members in a school in Bourj el-Barajneh, a southern suburb of Beirut, August 19, 2006. Hizbollah handed out bundles of cash on Friday to people whose homes were wrecked by Israeli bombing, consolidating the Iranian-backed group's support among Lebanon's Shiites and embarrassing the Beirut government. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard (LEBANON)"

This scene and dozens more like it flashed around the planet. Only one thing was missing--the thin wire security strip that runs from top to bottom of a genuine US$100 bill. The money Hezbollah was passing was counterfeit, as should have been evident to anybody who studied the photographs with due care.

Care was due because of Hezbollah's history of counterfeiting: In June, 2004, the U.S. Department of the Treasury publicly cited Hezbollah as one of the planet's leading forgers of U.S. currency.

But this knowledge was disregarded by the news organizations who queued up to publicize Hezbollah's pseudo-philanthropy. The passing of counterfeit bills was detected not by the reporters and photographers on the spot, but by bloggers thousands of miles away: SnappedShots.com, MyPetJawa and Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs. These sites magnified photographs and showed them to currency experts and detected irregularity after irregularity in the bills. (Links to all the sites mentioned here can be found at frum.nationalreview.com)

Frum goes on to outline the various other fakes and fraudulent claims surrounding Hezbollah, Reuters, and the war in Lebanon.

And the list is only going to get longer.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Hizbollah and Hezbollah and Lebanon.

Journalists Blame Israel for War Coverage

Note: This post was based on an article at YNetNews.com.
There are other accounts at the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz that paint a different picture of the nature of the comments made.
Media Line will be providing a transcript of what was actually said.

In the meantime, it may be that the comments made here are based on incorrect information

That's the headline from an article from YNet News.com. Amazing.

A number of journalists claimed during a convention in Jerusalem Monday evening that Israel and the IDF were mostly to blame for the way the foreign media covered the Lebanon war.

The panel of journalists, largely from the international media, convened to discuss their coverage of the war, at a conference arranged by the Media Line agency's Mideast Press Club.

On the one hand you have claims by the Chairman of the Foreign Press Association, and Bureau Chief of ABC News, Simon McGregor-Wood that "Journalists' access to the battlefield is controlled exclusively by the IDF...We are very disappointed that the IDF didn't give us more opportunities."

Complaints like that are expected.

But on the other hand is Steven Erlanger, the New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief, who claimed to be surprised that Israel's view of the war differed from that of its critics, and seems to be under the impression that Israelis didn't "quite grasp how the war was perceived outside of Israel." [Erlanger apparently was not taking US opinion into account]

Left unclear is why Israel should give weight to her critics' opinions at a time that thousands of rockets are raining down on Israel's cities and setting her forests on fire. McGregor-Wood and Erlanger share a hubris bordering on petulance at not getting their way. Erlanger himself is still stuck on the concept of proportionality in war and seems genuinely surprised that Israel did not further limit her defence of her citizens.

At the same time, during the convention:

Erlanger added that during the war, he "took General Yadlin (who briefed the press on IDF operations) too seriously."

'You are free to say what you like about us'

Erlanger told the panel he turned down an offer by the IDF Spokesperson Unit to gain access to IDF efforts aimed at enabling humanitarian aid to reach Lebanon, saying he was not interested in the story.

Considering how little attention was paid by the media to the casualites in Israel and the effect of 3,000-4000 Kassam rockets falling on her cities, it is not unexpected that Erlanger would have no interest in an angle that might cast Israel in a favorable light. Thus, while some of his colleagues mentioned the strict control Hezbollah enforced on the media, Ernlanger insisted that the only threat his own colleague faced in Lebanon was from Israel's missiles.

Another revealing remark was made by the Associated Press' Chief Jerusalem Correspondent, Ravi Nessman, who admitted that it was impossible to confirm what the death toll was:

"All we can do is report what everyone's telling us."

That is a recipe for confusion and bias--not reporting. It goes back to the 'Katrina Complex'.

In the aftermath of Katrina, during a discussion of the reporting that was done, Keith Woods, former newspaper reporter and editor at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and currently dean of the faculty at the Poynter Institute-- a school for journalists in Florida waxed eloquently on the great job done by the press:

Well, I did like the aggressiveness of the journalists throughout, I liked the fact that for a good part of this reporting the journalists brought themselves to the reporting a sense of passion, a sense of empathy, a sense of understanding that they were not telling an ordinary story any more than the Sept. 11 attacks were an ordinary story. So I like the fact that journalism understood the size of this story from the very beginning and brought to bear the kinds of resources and the kind of passion in the coverage that we saw.

This is a description that could easily sum up the attitude of journalists in Lebanon. In Mr. Woods case, Hugh Hewitt pointed out the "the lurid, the hysterical, the salaciousness of the reporting...they let in all the rumors, and all the innuendo, all the first-person story because they were caught up in this own emotionalism."

This was something Hezbollah recognized, was ready for, and manipulated to a degree that the media is still not willing to admit.

Woods' response sheds light not only on the exaggerated over-the-top reporting at Katrina, but in Lebanon as well:

The kind of reporting that journalists have to do during this time is revisionist. You have to keep telling the story until you get it right.

This is not so different from Nessman's claim that "All we can do is report what everyone's telling us."

Nessman though is less honest. If indeed all the media can do is report what eveyone is telling them, then the question arises why equal time was not given to the casualties in Israel with the reporting done in Lebanon. Likewise, the stories told by Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian stringers are accepted without question without equal time for the Israeli view. The reporting of manufactured stories of Israeli attacks on Red Cross ambulances and Reuters vehicles is a current example of accepting stories whole.

At the conclusion of the convention:
"You are free to say what you like about us, in the same way we are free to say what we like about you," the ABC's Simon Wood told the audience, which largely consisted of US immigrants to Israel.One would have hoped that journalists would report the facts and not just feel "free to say what we like about you," but yes, Mr. Wood--people are free to say what they think of the job of the media, to a far larger audience than ever before.

Glad you noticed.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Lebanon and Media Bias.

Pallywoodland

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Thomas Jefferson

Caroline Glick has written a must-read article in the Jerusalem Post that puts gives the kind of perspective that you get blinded to when watching the mind-numbing media go through its paces.

Glick fleshes out the point made by Mere Rhetoric in reaction to the New York Times' gratuitous invocation that Centanni and Wiig "were released unharmed". As Mere Rhetoric responds:

You idiot! You total blistering idiot! Being forced to convert is a harm. It might be the oldest harm short of death - being forced to renounce your faith and your god. Millions of people - literally millions - have died rather than deign to utter words that would force them to give up their faith. No wonder liberal journalists are utterly baffled by fully half of the United States - they don't think having to give up your religion is harmful. We are beyond certain that if Muslim prisoners at Gitmo were forced to convert away from Islam as a condition of their release, the New York Times would not be putting the phrase "released unharmed" into their lede. Way beyond certain.

There's a deeper explanation for how paragraphs like this can get written. It's not really bias, as much as it is the blind spots imposed by any ideology. And within that dynamic are questions about the degree of myopia and the room for self-reflection that particular ideologies allow.

Glick also notes this myopia in the coverage of Centanni and Wiig, and it is not limited to the New York Times:

While their remarks were covered extensively, no one seemed to think that the fact that their first post-release statements were made at a Palestinian Authority sponsored media extravaganza in Gaza was significant. No one noted that the men were flanked by Palestinian "security forces," and stood next to Hamas terrorist leader and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

No mention was made of the fact that the two were initially kidnapped by just such PA "security officials," or that Haniyeh is one of the leaders of one of the most fanatical jihadist organizations in the world, an organization that the majority of the "beautiful, kind-hearted and caring" Palestinians voted into office last January.

That is, no mention was made of the fact that until the two men left Gaza, they remained unfree. No one asked whether they had been given the option of not giving a press conference in Gaza. And now that they have spoken, there can be little doubt that a second press conference by the two men, in Israel or the US where no one will force them to convert to Judaism or Christianity or threaten to kill them, will draw far less media interest. After their press conference, the two men became yesterday's news.

But that was not the only item that was in the news that day. Reuters claimed that Israel had fired missiles at their reporter, Fadel Shada.

Yet it is unclear why anyone should believe either Shana or Reuters. Shana told Reuters that as he was driving to the battle scene, "I suddenly saw fire and the doors of the jeep flew open." He claims to have been wounded by shrapnel in his hand and leg. These are minor injuries for someone whose vehicle was just hit by a missile.

But then, the photographs taken of his vehicle after the purported missile attack give no indication that the car was hit by anything. There is a gash on the roof. The hood is bent out of shape. But nothing seems to have been burned. Cars hit by missiles do not look like they have just been in a nasty accident. Cars hit by missiles are destroyed.

Yet the glass on the windshield and the windows of Shana's vehicle isn't even shattered. In the photographs taken of Shana on the way to the hospital in Gaza, he lies on a stretcher, eyes closed, arm extended in full pieta mode. He is not visibly bleeding although there are some blood stains on his shirt, but then his undershirt is completely white.

I did not see these pictures in the media coverage of the purported IDF attack on the Reuters and Iranian cameramen. I saw them on Powerlineblog Web site [see here and here]. I did not see any questions raised from either the Israeli or the international media on the veracity of Shana's tale, which of course, provides a nice balance to the Centanni-Wiig hostage story.

All of this of course brings us back to the problem of the manipulation of the media by Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as the complete willingness of the media to be led by the nose in what information is available and how it should be presented.

AS IS the case with the Palestinian war against Israel, one of the most notable aspects of Hizbullah's latest campaign against Israel has been the active collaboration of news organizations and international NGO's in Hizbullah's information war against Israel. Like their rogue state sponsors, subversive sub-national groups like Hizbullah, Fatah and Hamas, see information operations as an integral part of their war for the annihilation of Israel and defeat of the West. And their information operations are more advanced than any the world has seen. As becomes more evident with each passing day, they have successfully corrupted both the world media and the community of NGOs that purportedly operate in a neutral manner in war zones.

Glick sees this as part of a wider problem.

It is not a coincidence that I saw the pictures of the Reuters' vehicle on Powerline and not in the media coverage of the purported attack. Both the global media and the international NGO community abjectly refuse to investigate themselves. As democratic governments and their militaries have proven incapable of dealing with the phenomenon (in part because they seek to curry favor with the media and the international NGO community), the blogosphere has taken upon itself the role of media watchdog.

The role of the blogosphere in all this is helpful, but a citizenship that is more critical and skeptical of its media is essential.

Some say that the falling readership of the newspapers is a sign of this.
But what if that just means they are reading the same newspapers online?

Technorati Tag: Media Bias and Israel and Reutersgate and Centanni and Hamas and Hezbollah and Hizbollah and Pallywood and Hezbollywood.

Does It Even Matter What the Koran Says--Centanni Conversion

Here is the YouTube video of the conversion--it may take a minute to come up:


Reuters reports that Steven Centanni and Olaf Wiig have been released by the Palestinian terrorists.

And what is the Reuters headline?

Kidnapped Fox journalists convert to Islam on video

Two kidnapped Fox journalists appeared on a new videotape released by their captors on Sunday in the Gaza Strip, in which the reporters said they had converted to Islam, the Fox News Channel said.

...They were shown separately sitting cross-legged, reading a statement which Fox said was an announcement that they had converted to Islam. At times in the video they were wearing long Muslim robes.

If that is indeed the highlight of the entire story, then maybe Reuters should tell the entire story, which is left to Fox News.

On the one hand, like Reuters, Fox provides the storyline that the Palestinians are anxious to push on a gullible world:

The day had begun with promises by senior Palestinian officials that the two would be released in coming hours.

At the same time, before the journalists' release, a new video was released, showing Wiig and Centanni dressed in beige Arab-style robes. Wiig, of New Zealand, delivered an anti-Western speech, his face expressionless and his tone halting. The kidnappers claimed both men had converted to Islam.

But Fox also gives Centanni's side of this part of the story as well:

Both of the men were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint, Centanni said.

"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint," Centanni told FOX News. "Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn't know what the hell was going on."

The issue with Reuters pointedly making the conversion the headline is summed up by Andy McCarthy at The Corner:

Will Reuters, which thought the "conversion" was newsworthy, report on that?

Or will we get the usual slew of "mainstream" Muslim experts who tell us that in Islam "there is no compulsion in religion," and that jihad is "the inner struggle against sin"?

According to the Koran Surah 2:256: "There is no compulsion in religion"

Apparently holding people at gunpoint does not count.
Neither does forcing Jews and Christians to pay the jizya tax as part the package of living as second class citizens under Islam--dhimmis--count either, apparently.

On this verse, Michael Cook writes in The Koran: A Very Short Introduction:

It does not compromise the notion of absolute religious truth, but it strongly suggests that the true religion can nonetheless coexist with any and all forms of false religion. For the traditional scholars, as we will see later, such a declaration of unconditional - not to say indiscriminate - tolerance was an embarrassment; they had to find ways and means of getting it out of the way. [emphasis added]

But does it even matter what the Koran says when those 'traditional scholars'--who are clearly in control of Islam today--have obviously been very successful in getting this verse out of the way in practice.

These days it is just trotted out for show by groups like CAIR.

Crossposted at Israpundit

Technorati Tag: Israel and Centanni and Koran and Islam and Islamic Fascists and Terrorism.

Hear The Voices CNN and BBC Ignore

According to Haaretz, here are some of the numbers since the war with Hezbollah began on July 12:

o Hezbollah fired 3,790 rockets into Israel.
o 901 of those rockets landed in communities.
o 42 civilians were killed as a result of those rockets.

o 4,262 civilians were treated in hospitals for injuries
o 33 these were seriously wounded,
o 68 of them were moderately wounded
o 1,388 were lightly wounded.
o Another 2,773 civilians were treated for shock and anxiety.

o Kiryat Shmona and the surrounding communi ties were the hardest hit, with 1,012 rockets falling there.
o 372 rockets fell inside Kiryat Shmona
o 354 rockets fell within its municipal boundaries.
o 25 of its residents were wounded
o 81 suffered from shock
o 2,003 apartments and 151 vehicles were damaged.

But don't tell CNN--they're much too preoccupied with Lebanon.

YNet News compares the CNN coverage of casualties in Israel and Lebanon and notes a:

Highly unbalanced report mostly ignores plight of Israeli civilians, portrays Israelis as soldiers and politicians in suits, while coverage from Lebanon features in-depth interviews with Lebanese civilians and images of children and ruins; no mention of large number of Israelis displaced from their homes in north

In a separate report on the media in general, YNet notes that media bias, so evident during the war, continued after the war as well. In this CNN is consistent:

As a tentative ceasefire appeared to take hold, CNN reported on the "thousands of refugees (who) poured back into southern Lebanon, trying to return home." There was, however, no coverage given in the report to the thousands of displaced Israelis in central and southern Israel, who are waiting to go back to their own homes in northern Israel, some of which have been destroyed.

AP actually did cover northern Israel and Haifa; BBC continued to produce one-sided reporting, going so far as to prominently feature anti-war protests in Israel on their website while ignoring Lebanese dissent against Hezbollah.

Other examples of CNN's bias:

During its television coverage of the war in Lebanon on Sunday, CNN chose the word "resistance" to describe Hizbullah's actions in Lebanon – a term used by Hizbullah - as well as Hamas, and Iraqi jihadis - to describe their own attacks. 'Resistance' is however a value laden term, which implicitly argues that armed jihad organizations are 'resisting' and defending against aggression, rather than initiating it.

CNN also twice described Israeli leaflets dropped over Lebanon as "propaganda." While it has done the same with American army leaflets dropped in Iraq and Afghanistan, CNN appears to shy away from describing leaflets issued by jihadi and terror organizations as "propaganda," using instead terms like "urge" and "called on" to describe leaflets issued by Hamas in Gaza or the Taliban in Afghanistan.

On way to get a real sense of what Israelis feel and experience is to go to israelvoices.com
This newly developed site describes itself:

IsraelVoices.com was established in the midst of the 2006 summer war that erupted between Israel and Hizballah terrorists, operating with close guidance and support from Iran and Syria. In its first month, the violence claimed over a thousand lives on both sides of Israel’s northern border and deliberately brought thousands of deadly missiles directly into Israeli civilian neighborhoods. While Israelis endured the pain of war as they stood up united against terror, they were shocked by the horror of seeing their nation vilified in the world press day-after-day, night-after-night by reporters, photographers and editors who allowed themselves – wittingly or not – to be directed, misled and callously used by terrorists to misinform global audiences about Israel’s fight for security, freedom and survival.

Their actions are not without consequence. Across the globe, no less than hundreds of millions of people follow the story of modern Israel with great interest and intensity. Many are inspired by religious passions, yearning for the peace of Jerusalem that is central to three main world religions. Many more recognize that as goes Israel, so goes the fate of the free world. Even a cursory glance of a regional map shows a sliver of land surrounded by boundless territories ruled by dictators, monarchs, sheiks, and fanatics for whom the basic values of western society are the very antithesis of their vision for their own nations, peoples and the world. In the battle for the future of the free world, typical Israelis find themselves on the front lines.

These are their stories, in their own words, of their own search for relatively normal lives in a dangerous, hostile region of the world; opportunities for love and work; leisure and liberty; a chance to dream, build, risk and sacrifice; the freedom to live their lives and contribute to a better world.

o Reuters is infested with faked and staged photos and has admitted to appeasing terrorists.
o CNN is has admitted to supressing information to maintain its Iraqi Bureau.
o BBC has a long history of anti-Israel bias

Since the world media has resigned itself to be the pawns of terrorists, the only way for Israel to get its message across is to do so itself.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Media Bias and CNN and Reuters and BBC.

Myths and Facts: The Media Is Fairly And Accurately Covering the War in Lebanon

The following is written by Mitchell Bard, author of "Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict," which can be viewed online or ordered

The original online article--with footnotes--can be viewed here.
You can join the AICE mailing list here.

MYTH

“The media is fairly and accurately covering the war in Lebanon.”

FACT

During the last war in Lebanon, disinformation was the norm and Israel’s enemies learned that they could disseminate lies that the media would not investigate, that they could exaggerate Israeli actions, and that reporters could be manipulated by controlling their access. This pattern is now repeating itself in coverage of Israel’s war with Hizballah terrorists.

Reporters covering the war from Lebanon have been particularly egregious in revealing their own biases based, it seems, on having been based in the country and developing sympathies for their subjects. More serious, however, has been the way some of these correspondents have allowed themselves to be used by Hizballah. In the first Lebanon war, the PLO threatened reporters and made favorable coverage the price of access. Hizballah learned from their example and now influences much of what reporters can see and say.

CNN’s Nic Robertson, for example, was taken to an area of Beirut and told that the rubble of buildings was a result of Israeli air strikes on civilian targets. He repeated the allegation as fact. He had no way of knowing what was in the buildings, whether it was a rocket workshop, a hiding place for katyushas, the home of a Hizballah leader, or a command center. In fact, he didn’t even know if Israel was responsible for the destruction that he was shown.

Robertson later admitted that his report had been influenced by his Hizballah guide. He acknowledged that he had been told what to film and where. “They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn’t have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath.” Robertson said Hizballah controls south Beirut. “You don’t get in there without their permission. We didn’t have enough time to see if perhaps there was somebody there who was, you know, a taxi driver by day, and a Hizballah fighter by night.” Unlike what he said on air during his guided reports, Robertson told CNN’s Reliable Sources, “there's no doubt that the bombs there are hitting Hezbollah facilities.”⁷⁴

Robertson’s CNN colleague, Anderson Cooper, is one of the journalists who has been consistently fair and balanced. He also has not hesitated to point out Hizballah's mendacity. He said the group was “just making things up,” and gave as one example a tour he was given in which Hizballah had lined up some ambulances. They were told to turn on their sirens and then the ambulances drove off as if they were picking up wounded civilians when, in fact, they were simply going back and forth.⁷⁵

Time Magazine contributor Christopher Albritton made clear that reporters understand the rules of the game. “To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hizballah is launching Katyushas, but I’m loath to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s passport, and they’ve already hassled a number of us and threatened one.”⁷⁶

Under no duress whatsoever, the Washington Post’s Thomas Ricks made perhaps the most outrageous charge of the war when he claimed that Israel is intentionally leaving Hizballah launchers intact because having Israeli civilians killed helps Israel in the public relations war.⁷⁷

Israel’s image is also being tarred by suggestions that it is targeting Lebanese Christian areas, intimating that Israel is killing innocent Christians and is not restricting its attacks to the Shiite Muslims of Hizballah. CNN reported, for example, an Israeli strike “on the edge of the city’s mostly Christian eastern district” that killed 10 people. In the next paragraph, however, the report says Israel hit “a building near a mosque” (emphasis added)⁷⁸

Photographs can be especially powerful, but they can also be misleading or outright fakes. In the last Lebanon war, for example, the Washington Post published a photograph (August 2, 1982) of a baby that appeared to have lost both its arms. The UPI caption said that the seven-month-old had been severely burned when an Israeli jet accidentally hit a Christian residential area. The photo and the caption, however, were inaccurate. The baby did not lose its arms, and the burns the child suffered were the result of a PLO attack on East Beirut.

A similarly dramatic photo of a baby pulled from the rubble of a building in Qana that appeared on front pages around the world is now being challenged as a fake.⁷⁹ One of the photographers involved, Adnan Hajj, was discovered to have doctored at least two photographs, one of which was changed to show more and darker smoke rising from buildings in Beirut bombed by Israel, and the other changed the image of an Israeli jet so it showed three flares being discharged instead of one. Reuters admitted the photos had been changed, suspended the photographer, and removed all of his photographs from its database.⁸⁰ This incident should make editors and viewers alike suspicious of images being disseminated by freelance Arab photographers and videographers who are engaging in propaganda rather than photo-journalism.

It is also conceivable that some of the scenes that reporters are being shown have been staged. It is difficult to prove without access to the raw footage of the photographers, but anyone who doubts that this is part of the strategy of Israel’s enemies need only look at the examples of Palestinians choreographing events in the territories documented on The Second Draft web site.

Reporters in Lebanon also continue to exaggerate the destruction in Beirut and elsewhere by showing tight shots of buildings hit in Israeli air strikes and rebroadcasting the same images repeatedly. “You would think Beirut has begun to resemble Dresden and Hamburg in the aftermath of Second World War air raids,” observed former Sunday Telegraph correspondent Tom Gross. But, Gross notes, “a careful look at aerial satellite photos of the areas targeted by Israel in Beirut shows that certain specific buildings housing Hizballah command centers in the city’s southern suburbs have been singled out. Most of the rest of Beirut, apart from strategic sites such as airport runways used to ferry Hizballah weapons in and out of Lebanon, has been left pretty much untouched.”⁸¹

Qana was also an example of how the press immediately reports whatever statistics they are fed by Lebanese officials. Again, we learned in the last war that these figures are usually inflated and the press rarely bothers to verify them. Front page stories around the world said that 57 civilians were killed when Israel bombed a building it believed to be empty. While still tragic, the actual casualty figure was only 28. Moreover, most accounts failed to mention the building was in an area where 150 rocket attacks on Israel had originated.

While an Israeli strike that killed UN observers drew headlines, little attention was given to reports that Hizballah was using the UN posts as shields. A Canadian soldier with UNIFIL, for example, reported that his team could observe “most of the Hizballah static positions in and around our patrol base” and noted that Israeli ordnance that fell near the base was not a result of deliberate targeting, but “has rather been due to tactical necessity.”⁸²

Over the years, the Arabs have learned one sure-fire way to get media attention is to scream “massacre” when Israelis are in the neighborhood. On August 7, news outlets repeated Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s claim that Israel had committed a “massacre” by killing 40 people in an air raid on the village of Houla. Later, it was learned that one person had died.⁸³ Throughout the fighting Siniora’s statements to the media have suggested that Israel has unique weaponry that only hits civilians and never terrorists.

Turning momentarily away from the carnage of war, some reporters have suggested that Israeli attacks have created environmental problems in Lebanon. Meanwhile, little attention has been devoted to the ecological damage caused by fires sparked by Katyusha rockets that have destroyed 16,500 acres of forests and grazing fields.

The press is also spending a great deal of time talking to Lebanese civilians and their relatives in the United States and highlighting the difficult conditions they are enduring. This is no doubt the case since they are living in a war zone; however, the media has spent almost no time talking to the Israelis living under the constant threat of rocket attacks. Few reporters have gone into the bomb shelters to interview the frightened Israeli families. No one seems interested in how the relatives of Israelis in the United States feel about their loved ones living under siege.

Similarly, initial reports focused on the Americans living in Lebanon while no one seems interested in the 120,000 North Americans living in Israel. It is terrible that tourists and students had to be evacuated from Lebanon, but what about those same groups in Israel? How many reporters talked to the hundreds of students on summer tours and programs in Israel, many of whom were in the north when the violence escalated? While the complications of leaving the country may not be as severe as in Lebanon, it is still very difficult to arrange a quick exit from Israel, and many American parents are in a state of panic worrying about their family and friends in Israel.

Here are some facts that the media has neglected:

• Two million Israelis are now living under threat of rockets, including approximately 700,000 Israeli Arabs.
• Altogether, more than 300,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes.
• Fifteen percent of the entire Israeli population is living in bomb shelters.
• Approximately 5,500 homes have been damaged by Hizballah rockets.
• Israel’s tourist industry, which had finally started to recover from the Palestinian War, is again being devastated.
• Towns that are home to important sites of the three major religions have come under fire, including Tiberias, Nazareth and Safed.

Wars are never easy to cover, and each side of a conflict wants to make its case through the media. A responsible press, however, does not repeat whatever it hears, it first makes every effort to insure the accuracy of its reporting. That is the standard expected of journalists covering the war between Israel and Hizballah.

The original online article--with footnotes--can be viewed here.
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Technorati Tag: Israel and Lebanon and Media Bias and Hizbollah and Hezbollah.