Monthly Archives: May 2014

NY Times skewed view on Pope prayer invitation and MidEast Peace

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NYT May 27, 2014 “For Middle East, Region of Religious Conflict, Pope Suggests a Respite in Prayer”

 

Jodi Rudoren penned a piece in a “Memo from Jerusalem”, freeing her from the invisible constraints of reporting news “truthfully”, and shared her personal observations about the pope and the Middle East conflict. Her bias towards the Palestinian narrative remains clear.

 

  1. Her opening sentence states that Pope Francis came back from the “Holy Land with the typical bag of ceremonial gifts, including, from the children of Bethlehem’s refugee camps, a mock-up of an identification card in the name of Jesus that lists family members as Mohandas K. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Yasir Arafat and Martin Luther King Jr.” Wow.
    1. I’ve been to Israel 30+ times. I’ve been to Jerusalem, Jericho and Bethlehem. I never once came back with a propaganda ID card. Does she really think that it’s “typical”?
    2. Jodi has often written about the Vatican and the UN now referring to the “State of Palestine”. You cannot have a refugee camp of Palestinians in a “State of Palestine”. You cannot claim to have a state and be a refugee of that state while living in such state.
  2. It is quite impressive to list a terrorist like Yasir Arafat with Gandhi and MLK. I would have hoped Jodi would have continued to detail the outrageousness of the comparison, but alas, I believe she thinks it fine to equate a civil rights leader with the man who brought the world airplane hijackings. Here are two quotes: one from Arafat and one from Gandhi. See if you can guess who said which:
    i.      “I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.”
    ii.      “We will not bend or fail until the blood of every last Jew from the youngest child to the oldest elder is spilled to redeem our land!”
  3. The article compliments the pope navigating his trip “without seeming to offend” any of the parties.  A strange comment considering over the prior three days Jodi pointed out the anger of the Palestinians for the pope’s laying a wreath at Herzl’s grave and of the Israelis anger for the pope stopping at the security barrier near a sign that labeled it an “Apartheid Wall”.
  4. Jodi goes on to compare the pope’s stopping at the security barrier, with a wall commemorating Israeli victims of terror. In a “normal” world, these two visits would be THE SAME prayer to stop violence, as the security barrier was built during the Second Intifada specifically to stop terrorism. However, Jodi’s remarks make clear that the stop at the barrier was not just the pope connecting with Palestinians and Israelis, but was meant to “shame” the Israelis. How can a parallel be drawn between a security mechanism and a memorial to innocent victims?
  5. She dismissed the prospects of the “peace prayer” at the Vatican “particularly” because Israeli President Peres role is “ceremonial” and he is set to leave the post in July.
    1. NYT again blames Israel for any path forward.
    2. Ignores the fact that Palestinian President Abbas’s term in office expired in 2009 – over four years ago.
  6. Jodi chose to liken the parties stating that “extremists on both sides have exploited religion to block resolution”. That statement is not an over-simplification, it is dishonest:
    1. Hamas won the last elections the Palestinians held, winning 58% of the vote back in 2006. Kahane’s party has been banned in Israel for decades.
    2. Hamas controls Gaza and 1.7 million people. Jewish “extremists” are individuals who do not control land or a population.
    3. The “right-wing” (NYT terminology) Likud and The Jewish Home parties have no disparaging comments about Christians or Muslims. However, the Hamas governing charter is a rant of anti-Semitism. A few quotes here:
      i.      Article 20: [the Jews are] “a vicious, Nazi-like enemy, who does not differentiate between man and woman, elder and young…The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone.”
      ii.      Article 22: “[Jews] have been scheming for a long time,… they took over control of the world media such as news agencies, the press, publication houses, broadcasting and the like. … They stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions and behind most of the revolutions”
      iii.      Article 7: “The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!”
  7. Notable for its absence over a week of reporting on the pope visiting the Holy Land, and again in this article dedicated to religion and prayer, was the current status of Christianity in the region.
    1. Israel has freedom of religion for all; all churches are open and people are free to pray in the manner of their choosing. That is not true in most of the Middle East
    2. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population is growing
    3. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the number of Christian tourists surpasses any other religion, including Jews.
    4. Israel is the only country in the region which is the target of BDS by some Christian groups
  8. Also absent from the articles was Abbas’s comment to the pope that “Israel is systematically acting to change [Jerusalem’s] identity and character, and strangling the Palestinians, both Christians and Muslims, with the aim of pushing them out”. No comment from the NYT about the religiously charged lie:
    1. The Christian population in Jerusalem has increased since Israel re-unified the city in 1967. The only time that the Christian population declined over the past 100 years was during Jordanian rule 1949-67
    2. The Muslim population in Jerusalem never increased more over the past 150 years than it has under Israeli rule
    3. From 1967-2011, Muslim population in Jerusalem increased 4.4x, compared to 2.5x for Jews
    4. Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority since 1870. How has the “identity and character” changed in Abbas’s mind? Oh, Jews are once again living in the Old City, now that the 1949 Jordanian expulsion of the Jews and 19-year ban is over.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/world/middleeast/for-middle-east-region-of-religious-conflict-pope-suggests-a-respite-in-prayer.html?_r=0

 

NYTimes shows its preference in “dueling narratives” in the Middle East

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New York Times May 26, 2014: “Pope Lays Wreath at Tomb of Zionism’s Founder”

The NYT headline would lead a reader to believe that the article is about Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism. Guess again.

1.      The article is not about Herzl at all- he is mentioned in passing in the seventh paragraph.

2.      The article is about dueling narratives of Israelis and Palestinians. It is clear which one the NY Times favors, as the day beforehand it posted a huge front page photograph of the Pope at the security barrier, compared to this article on page A10 which includes three photographs of the pope at religious sites for Jews, Muslims and Christians.

3.      The article does not point to the NYT posting the photograph on its front page, but says that the picture simply “rocketed around the Internet”, making the paper seem uninvolved in its promotion.

4.      The author writes of the “graffiti-scarred concrete barrier separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem”. There is no mention that Israel handed control of Bethlehem to Palestinians and that Israel controls Jerusalem, so a checkpoint is appropriate.

5.      The fact that the fence was built specifically due to Arabs from the West Bank murdering Israelis is stated only as a quote from Netanyahu, making the statement appear biased rather than factual.

6.      The choice of words “the pope acceded to Israel’s request that he add to his packed Monday morning another unscheduled stop” makes Israel appear demanding and unreasonable in bullying the pope.

7.      The NY Times decided that a stamp of the pope pressing his head against a security barrier next to a sign that says “Apartheid Wall” is somehow analogous to Israel making a stamp of the pope placing a note in the Western Wall. One is a wall constructed to prevent terror, but has a sign blaming the victim, while the other wall is a religious place of prayer. The Palestinian stamp is a propaganda tool which wipes its crimes clean, while the Israelis post a stamp of hope. (There are four paragraphs in the article to stress this point).

8.      The NYT mentions that Peres post of President of Israel is ceremonial and that he leaves his post soon, but does not continue that Abbas’s term of President of the Palestinian Authority ended in 2009.

9.      The NYT, as always, included language that make the Israelis appear angry: “incensed some Israelis” and “some Israeli griping”. This language is not used for Palestinians.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/world/middleeast/pope-francis-jerusalem.html

Jerusalem, and a review of the sad state of divided capitals in the world

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Divided capital cities are a sad result of wars.  No capitals get divided as a result of peace; they are unstable models.

-divided cities make up less than 1/1000th of 1% of all cities in the world
-divided cities are almost all less than 50,000 people
-most divided cities are split by a natural boundary like a river
>> none of that is true for Jerusalem

The only rationale of dividing Jerusalem is that Palestinian Arabs have asked for it as a capital, which is the same as Israel asking for it.

Three of the divided capitals in recent years – Beirut, Berlin and Jerusalem – have been reunited.  The last city – Nicosia, Cyprus – is still under negotiation to be reunited.

 

 

Music tribute to the Sacrifice of US Servicemen (Dire Straits)

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The “War on Terror” has thus far claimed 4,423 US lives in Iraq; 2,320 lives In Afghanistan and another 66 lives around the Arabian Sea.

In addition, there have been over 50,000 injured, over 34,000 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Diagnoses and over 4,000 servicemen killed since returning from battle from suicide and car accidents.

 

 

Frightening New York Times 4/27/14 article on “Mahmoud Abbas Shifts on Holocaust”

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  1. Abbas new statement that the Holocaust was bad does nothing to negate his various prior comments, phd paper and published book that claim: 1) that 6 million Jews were not murdered in the Holocaust; and 2) that Zionists conspired with Nazis so that more Jews would move to Palestine (so Zionists are at least partially to blame for the Holocaust).
  2. (By way of comparison, If Abbas would have reversed his prior statements and negated his research, that would have been a “shift”.  OR, if Abbas would have come out and said that the Palestinian Arabs of 1936-46 who fought successfully against the Zionists and British who then limited Jewish immigration to Palestine before and during WWII were responsible for 100,000+ Jews dying in the Holocaust, that would have been a shift).
  3. NYT claims that Abbas’s latest comment “goes further” in back-tracking from his Holocaust denial and attacks on Zionism because he claims that Palestinians understand suffering from Israeli “ethnic discrimination and racism”. Not only does the Abbas comment not negate his offensive comments, but it further insults Jews and Israelis by calling them racists, and suggests that the Holocaust is similar to the situation of stateless Arabs.
  4. Hamas is called a “militant Islamist faction” and not a terrorist organization
  5. No NYT mention of the fact that the Hamas Charter calls for the death of Jews
  6. No NYT mention that Hamas refuses to allow Holocaust education in the schools of Gaza against the wishes of the United Nations
  7. Thank you New York Times, for posting an article on Holocaust Remembrance Day about Abbas, the Holocaust denier, and his latest anti-Israel comments, and for phrasing the headline and article to try to make him look like a progressive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/world/middleeast/palestinian-leader-shifts-on-holocaust.html?_r=0

Biased New York Times report on recent Gaza blockade boat

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NYT April 30, 2014 on explosion that sank potential blockade-busting boat from Gaza:
1. No mention that the Israeli blockade of Gaza has been deemed legal by international law

2. The boat is called “small” in keeping with the David v. Goliath imagery the NYT likes to impart in the conflict

3. No mention that the terrorist group Hamas runs Gaza. Instead we see terms of “Palestinian activists”, “Palestinian fishing boats” and “Palestinian goods” to make this terrorist haven sound like Bermuda

4. The “clashes that broke out” were not passive, they were Turks trying to kill soldiers who reacted in self-defense.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/30/world/middleeast/blast-in-gaza-damages-boat-meant-for-protest.html