UPDATE:Martin Solomon adds, “Speaking of CNN, take a look at what happened when Rick Sanchez was interviewing Wolf Blitzer, and live responses to Sanchez’s Twitter feed were scrolling along the screen…take a look at the type of thing that made the air: From CNN’s lower third: ‘Jewish lobby runs America’“
In my earlier post (here or join the debate at Harry’s Place,) I mentioned that my appearance this week on CNN was introduced with three clips about the evils of the Israel Lobby featuring Rami Khouri, Stephen Walt and Loretta Napoleoni. I added that I’d never heard of Napoleoni, but one of the Harry’s Place commenters, David Thompson, has. And he points out this miserable apologia for the late, unlamented Al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi which Napoleoni published in Socialist Worker, no less!
Here’s a flavor of what she has to say: “He showed strong leadership qualities and organisational skills. The inmates elected him their leader. People were impressed by his determination and his kindness. Once he personally bathed a mujahideen who had been injured and had lost a leg.”
Got the kleenex out yet?
Apparently, CNN International believes that this apologist for Zarqawi, the murderer of American troops and Iraqi civilians, both Shi’a and Sunni, can simultaneously be presented as an authoritative analyst of Middle East politics.
A recent Rasmussen poll on U.S. public attitudes toward Israeli settlements has gotten some attention in major media sources. No matter where you stand on the settlement issue, it’s too bad the poll is literally nonsense.
This blog, like so many others, devotes a lot of its efforts to questions arising from the Israel-Palestine conflict. Open any newspaper and you’ll find hectares of news and opinion about the current tension between Israel and the United States. The death of one Thai worker in Israel yesterday, killed by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, has made the front pages of today’s New York Times and the Times of London, to name just two of the many important papers that have prominently covered it.
To anyone who knows the medium of television, the statement that a news program is probably the last place to have a serious discussion about a serious matter is hardly a revelation. The allotted timeframe, generally three or four minutes, precludes any in-depth analysis. Discussants are acutely aware that they have to communicate in soundbites, so rather than engaging with each other, they artfully twist the presenter’s questions into answers that emphasize the talking points they arrived at the studio with. That’s how it’s always been.
As regular readers of this blog know, comments are approved before they are published and deleted if they are not. Given the issues we cover, we receive a disproportionate amount of trash, much of it abusive and antisemitic. Today, though, there was a little more than usual, including such gems as, “I hate jews who do nothing but protect the illegal country of Israel,” and “neocon jews wield almost unchallenged power in republican party foriegn (sic) policy and control many op-ed pages in major american newspapers.” I wondered why. Then the penny dropped. Glenn Greenwald linked to us. Charming company you keep, Glenn.
UPDATE: Thanks to Elder of Ziyon for figuring out a way to copy the above map. Some of you have said that the link below isn’t working, so if you want to see the above online, go here.
As David Axelrod might put it, this is an insult and an affront. Visit the online route map of EgyptAir, the airline owned by the same state which signed an historic peace agreement with Israel in 1979, and you will see, once you click on the “Middle East & Gulf” section, that Israel has, well, disappeared.
Even if the Ramat Shlomo announcement and its aftermath is a salutary reminder of the old Yiddish proverb about not spitting in the well you drink from, that should not be the only lesson we draw from this week’s events. Continue reading ‘Meanwhile, in Ramallah…’
This is a crosspost by Mark Gardner of the CST blog
On 2 March I posted an article expressing concern about John Pilger: and, more importantly, about what would appear to be the repeated failure of his publishers at the New Statesman to moderate or edit his rhetoric concerning Zionism and Jews.
The propensity of some Israeli political leaders to speak publicly or take action before thinking clearly of the consequences hit a new low this week during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit.
If Israelis were looking for reassurance that the United States is genuinely the Jewish state’s number one ally, the vice president couldn’t have been clearer. “The bond between the U.S. and Israel has been and will remain unshakable,” declared Biden. “Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel.” But, alas, there is a significant gap, on settlements, and it was an Israeli Cabinet Minister who decided to remind all with international media focused on every step of Biden’s visit.
After a week in which the Israeli government displayed its exquisite sense of timing, Vice-President Biden delivered a major speech at Tel Aviv University today. For those who don’t have time to watch the video, here are the bullet points.
This article includes a guest contribution by habibi from Harry’s Place.
A group of friends in London alerted me to this grubby little piece by a British Labour Party Member of Parliament, Bob Marshall-Andrews, concerning his recent visit to Gaza. Upon reading it, I was struck by various thoughts, not least the degree to which Marshall-Andrews words will be welcomed by the Hamas cheerleaders who compose the Palestinian solidarity movement, in marked contrast to the fierce condemnation with which this blog, and others like it, will greet his compendium of antisemitism-laced falsehoods. Why bother to refute such lies, one might ask, when those of us who defend Israel are at irreconcilable odds with those who demonize her, when any charge of antisemitism we make is bound to be dismissed as another tired attempt to muzzle debate? The most satisfactory answer I can come up with is that some things - and Marshall-Andrews article is one of them - are so odious that they cannot pass without rebuke.
The present and previous presidents of Argentina have both stood up at the UN General Assembly and politely requested that the government of Iran extradite the AMIA massacre suspects it is sheltering.
If Vidal Sassoon lived in Gaza, he’d be in hiding now for two reasons. One, because he’s Jewish. Two, because he’s a hairdresser who works in women’s salons. More here. Someone please remind me: wasn’t there something, somewhere about Hamas being moderate and enlightened?
As the event known as “Israel Apartheid Week” (IAW) kicks off, here are some resources to combat the antisemitic, Soviet-inspired slander that Israel is an apartheid state.
Here are three good pieces which came out today. Robbie Sabel has written a detailed paper published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs debunking the apartheid analogy. Richard (don’t confuse him with Roger!) Cohen has an incisive column in today’s Washington Post. And, in a searing editorial, Canada’s National Post points out that a motion condemning IAW has been unanimously passed in the Ontario provincial parliament (H/T: Robin Shepherd.)
Going further back in the archives, Z Word published a path-breaking essay by South African writers Rhoda Kadalie, a South African Human Rights Commissioner, and Julia Bertelsmann, which challenged the analogy from the perspective of those who directly experienced apartheid in South Africa. I also wrote a monograph for AJC entitled “The Ideological Foundations of the Boycott Campaign Against Israel,” much of which is devoted to exposing the the blatant falsehood that Israel is an apartheid state.
Finally, here’s another chance to see the film I produced last year, “Vilified: Telling Lies About Israel.” The falsehoods we uncovered here will doubtless be repeated at the various IAW events.
Here’s the latest video from AJC Reality Check, focusing on how the prejudices of one of Richard Goldstone’s lieutenants, Desmond Travers, played a key role in the distortions which followed in the Goldstone report.
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Even if the Ramat Shlomo announcement and its aftermath is a salutary reminder of the old Yiddish proverb about not spitting in the well you drink from, that should not be the only lesson we draw from this week’s events.